Books Behind Bars: The Great Break-In
They didn’t come.
Then tear off the covers, Jackson proposed. Too time-consuming. If the publishers tear off the covers, can I have the books? Jackson asked. No, he was told.
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Perhaps it no longered mattered. Jackson feared it was too late for him to change his life by reading. “Both my mental capacity as well as attention span has diminished to such a degree whereas to render it all but ineffective,” he lamented.
Glotz also tried to explain why the jail didn’t bother to tell inmates about the books that had gone back to the sender. Too much work, said Glotz: “Due to the burden of processing mail for . . . 5,600 inmates . . . the Department of Corrections notifies only the sender of the contraband hardcover that it is being rejected for security reasons.”
“And the book came back unopened,” Allison said, “with written on the cover, ‘Hard.’”
Any further changes in the rules will have to be approved by the court, and the jail will have to notify not only Allison but also the John Howard Association and the American Booksellers Association. And to make sure the jail follows the rules, Allison gets to visit it every three months.
