谁应该决定监狱里允许看什么书?

谁应该决定监狱里允许看什么书?

Michael Tafolla says the books he read in prison helped him understand how he had landed there in the first place. He remembers one especially eye-opening title: Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant.

迈克尔·塔弗拉说，他在监狱里读的书帮助他理解了自己最初是如何来到这里的。他记得一个特别令人大开眼界的标题：《非法:无证移民的反思》。

"The main topic of this book is how a human being is reduced to an action that's perceived by others to be wrong," Tafolla says. "And therefore he is not a human being, but he is a walking, talking, breathing crime act."

“这本书的主要主题是一个人是如何沦落为别人认为是错误的行为的，” 塔弗拉说。“因此，他不是人，而是一个会走路、会说话、会呼吸的犯罪行为。”

Tafolla was released from Danville Correctional Center in 2018. Not long after, in January 2019. officials at the Illinois prison censored Illegal and about 200 other books, removing them from the library of a college-in-prison program. Officials were concerned about "racially motivated" material, according to documents obtained by Illinois Public Media.

塔弗拉于2018年从丹维尔惩教中心获释。不久之后，也就是2019年1月，伊利诺伊州监狱的官员审查了非法书籍和大约200本其他书籍，将它们从一个监狱大学项目的图书馆中移除。根据伊利诺伊州公共媒体获得的文件，官员们对“出于种族动机”的材料感到担忧。

Experts say this is just one example of the kind of arbitrary book censorship that incarcerated people face nationwide — censorship that can make it harder to get an education behind bars.

专家们说，这只是全国范围内被监禁的人面临的任意对书籍进行审查的一个例子，这种审查会使人们在狱中接受教育变得更加困难。

"It's so important for people who are in prison to be able to have access to materials that give them hope and a reason to want to be part of society again, to want to engage, to see the future," says Rebecca Ginsburg of the Education Justice Project. She says she was shocked and angry when she learned the books had been removed from her program's library at Danville.

教育公正项目的丽贝卡·金斯伯格说:“对于那些在监狱里的人来说，能够接触到给他们带来希望的材料是非常重要的，这些材料给了他们重新融入社会的理由，让他们想要参与其中，看到未来。”她说，当她得知这些书被从她在丹维尔的项目图书馆拿走时，她感到震惊和愤怒。

A recent report from PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free expression, found that book censorship in U.S. prisons represents "the largest book ban policy in the United States." And while censorship guidelines vary in different prison systems, the restrictions "are often arbitrary, overbroad, opaque, [and] subject to little meaningful review."

倡导言论自由的非营利组织美国笔会最近发布的一份报告发现，美国监狱的图书审查制度代表着“美国最大的图书禁令政策”。虽然审查指导方针在不同的监狱系统中有所不同，但这些限制“往往是武断的、过于宽泛的、不透明的，(而且)很少受到有意义的审查。”

In Kansas, state prisons don't allow Angie Thomas' young adult novel, The Hate U Give, or Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye — but they do allow Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

在堪萨斯州，州立监狱不允许安吉·托马斯的青年小说《你所给予的仇恨》或托尼·莫里森的《最蓝的眼睛》，但允许阿道夫·希特勒的《我的奋斗》。

Texas prisons have censored Alice Walker's The Color Purple, which won a Pulitzer Prize; New Hampshire bars Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones; and Florida has censored multiple books about learning Arabic, Japanese and American Sign Language.

德克萨斯州监狱审查了爱丽丝·沃克的《紫色》，该书曾获得普利策奖;新罕布什尔州禁止爱丽丝·西博尔德的《可爱的骨头》;佛罗里达州已经审查了多本关于学习阿拉伯语、日语和美国手语的书籍。

A 2013 report from the RAND Corporation found that getting an education in prison decreases the likelihood someone will return after they're released.

兰德公司2013年的一份报告发现，在监狱接受教育会降低获释后返回的可能性。

Diana Woodside, director of policy and legislative affairs for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, says that of course, some reading material should be banned from prisons.

宾夕法尼亚州惩教部政策和立法事务主管戴安娜·伍德赛德表示，当然，监狱应该禁止一些阅读材料。

"There's a lot of how-to books and how-to articles in magazines, such as how to strangle someone with your bare hands — that was an actual article in a very popular men's magazine. ... There's also writings that are specific for inmates: how to escape from handcuffs."

“有很多入门书籍和杂志上的入门文章，比如《如何徒手勒死人》，这是一本非常受欢迎的男性杂志上的一篇真正的文章。…也有专门针对囚犯的文章《如何逃脱手铐》。”

Woodside points to two common standards for evaluating publications: "Do they pose a potential threat to the security of the operation of the prisons? Or do they contain nudity or sexually explicit materials?"

伍德赛德指出了评估出版物的两个常见标准：“它们是否对监狱运作的安全构成潜在威胁?或者它们是否包含裸体或露骨的性内容?”

Some publications clearly violate those standards — but Woodside acknowledges there's a large gray area.

一些出版物显然违反了这些标准，但伍德赛德承认存在很大的灰色区域。

"There's a fine line between, you know, imposing our own personal judgment on the quality of the content of that book and making really sound, rational decisions to keep our facilities safe."

“你知道，在把我们个人的判断强加给那本书的内容质量和做出真正充足、合理的决定以保证我们的设施安全之间，有一条微妙的界限。”

One of those gray areas is nudity. Woodside says prison officials in Pennsylvania struggle over whether to allow certain graphic novels, specifically from Japan.

其中一个灰色地带是裸体。伍德赛德说，宾夕法尼亚州的监狱官员正在为是否允许某些漫画小说，特别是来自日本的漫画小说而斗争。