Late last year, the Arkansas Board of Corrections unanimously approved a policy that would prohibit inmates from receiving books, newspapers or magazines directly. Those restrictions were set to go into place on Sunday, but that ruling has been on hold indefinitely for now. Board members claim that the change was necessary to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering prisons.
DecaARcerate is a nonprofit that supports and advocates for people currently or previously incarcerated in Arkansas. In a press release, they say that the Department of Corrections reported 25 instances of drugs entering the prisons between January 2022 and August 2025, out of what was potentially tens of thousands of books delivered to inmates.
Kaleem Nazeem is the co-director of DecARcerate and a formerly incarcerated person himself.
"I was incarcerated in the Arkansas Department of Corrections for approximately 28 years and 11 months. I had a life without parole sentence. I was released in 2018 because of the ruling that came through the United States Supreme Court, which was Miller versus Alabama, which said that it was unconstitutional to give a juvenile a mandatory life without parole sentence. When I initially went to prison, I was 17 years old, and I was released when I was 48 years old. So I left that context because of my direct experience with the prison system as far as being someone incarcerated."
Nazeem says he cannot overemphasize how important access to books and printed materials were to him while he was in prison. He describes himself as functionally illiterate at the age of 17, and he used his time in prison to begin the process of pursuing an education.
"So books were my avenue of my… I won't say rehabilitation, but my growth and development. I was able to grow and develop through books. Books kept me attached to the world where I was able to read books like “A Fine Balance” or Pearl Buck's “The Good Earth” or Naeem Akbar's “Vision for a Black Man”, and just different books kept me occupied during my time. It allowed me to amalgamate into a full human being, and I think it's just a travesty to try to ban books from the prison system."
While this potential prohibition is one of the strictest in the nations, it doesn't prohibit all books from entering prisons. Book donations from nonprofit groups or local libraries to prison libraries will still be allowed. However, incarcerated people will not be able to individually receive physical materials if this ruling does go into effect. That includes a person buying a book directly from a reputable source like Barnes and Noble or Amazon. Nazeem says this also includes books and materials for inmates doing educational courses.
"A lot of guys who are incarcerated who have the means to do correspondence courses through the mail, this will apply to them also because it's not just the books, it's the mail. It's the correspondence courses and things of that nature there. So I think this is something that we need to pay very close attention to because we say, as a society, that we want individuals to come out better individuals, more healthy and whole. Well, I feel that education is the number one catalyst for change."
Nazeem agrees that drugs in prison are a problem, but he says he doesn't believe it's the books bringing them into the prison.
"When we just look at some of the data about how drugs are being introduced into the prison system. We have to also look at the guards that come in on a daily basis also. So it's a double standard the way they're trying to apply a book ban, saying that this will eliminate drugs coming into the institution and never address the other half of it, or what I say is the bigger part of it, is staff bringing in the drugs into the institution."
He says this sort of prohibition and limitations of an inmate's ability to access printed materials is reminiscent of the time of slavery in America.
"It was illegal to teach someone that was a slave how to read and write. And to me, this book is bringing up connotations of that era of our society where we're telling individuals that if you're incarcerated, you basically don't deserve to be taught or don't deserve to learn and grow and be healthy and whole as an individual, how you choose to be."
Arkansas Department of Corrections Secretary Lindsay Wallace told the Arkansas Advocate last week that the restrictions to books and printed materials needed to go through the administrative rulemaking process and require sign off from state legislators, a process that could take months.
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