The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs New York prisons, took a strong stance on May 11, 2023. It announced a set of rules strictly limiting the work incarcerated people can publish in the state. It also banned receiving payment for their work.
Artwork. Poetry. Film scripts. Music. Books. And, especially concerningly, journalism. This proposed silencing of incarcerated voices would attack it all.
But it didn’t last long.
Only one day after a news outlet reported on this directive and what it would mean, the prison agency rescinded their policy. In this victory, an attack on journalism was thwarted. And this makes a critical point that’s part of an even wider web.
Black studies classes are under attack. Prisons have banned books by Black authors. Schools and libraries outside prison walls are suffering from censorship. It’s all connected.
And when incarcerated Black writers and artists have always been critical to everyone’s understanding of prison conditions and abolition, this failed policy can’t be a coincidence.
When the system controls what knowledge goes in and out of prisons, it’s trying to break down the individual and collective power of incarcerated and non-incarcerated people.
Because when we share knowledge with each other, we become equipped to challenge these anti-Black systems and demand a better future.