“It’s a game of bureaucracy and bending the rules:” Prison librarians’ resistance to censorship

• In Event: The Excesses of Incarceration

Abstract

Drawing from 160 surveys and 26 in-depth interviews with prison librarians across the U.S., this research explores the ways in which some librarians resist institutional regulations about censorship. Most librarians experience a great deal of ambivalence about the censorship that occurs in prisons. However, those who resist censorship do so because of ethical concerns; a sense of duty as librarians to fight against it; what they believe are undue restrictions; the capricious and inconsistent nature of the censorship they witness; and the lack of input they have in the decision-making process about what is censored, something done by people they often perceive as inept or unduly punitive. As actors in a paramilitary, bureaucratic organization, prison librarians must decide how and when to act upon their beliefs; they must make choices within constraints. Some librarians actively resist censorship through official channels, such as filing paperwork to contest an item’s censorship, while others choose more informal, confrontational approaches, such as refusing to comply with custody officers’ orders to remove items. Other times, librarians’ acts of resistance are done in the backstage, through informal or illicit means like ignoring or ‘tweaking’ policies in ways that their coworkers are unlikely to discover.

Author

• Tammi Arford, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth