Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections is attempting to ban book donations to prisoners and instead sell them an expensive e-book reader. The damn thing isn’t even preloaded; each title has a price-tag, even those in the public domain. If this were accompanied with a substantial beefing-up of their in-house prison libraries (as far as I know, it isn’t), I would have no objection. As it stands, this is simply adding insult to injury in a system that already gives little to no thought for recidivism. I hope the people of Pennsylvania will not stand to hear their politicians bitch about overcrowded prisons while those very institutions forbid the means by which the minds therein might be transfigured, and rescued from inevitable return.
