2008 Woodie Awards
When the government purges your library
Jonathan Coley
Issue date: 10/3/07 Section: Opinion
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A few years ago, civil liberties activists all across the country were protesting the rapid expansion of government, with the 2001 PATRIOT Act giving the FBI power to access library records.
Now we're finding out that this was the least of our worries. Apparently, the government now has the power to choose what books can be found in libraries.
The story starts just two months ago, when Moshe Milstein and John Okon, an Orthodox Jew and a Protestant confined in an upstate New York prison, filed a lawsuit claiming that hundreds of religious books, which could previously be found in their prison chapel libraries, were now gone.
After some investigation, the two inmates discovered that the "great prison library purge" was not unique to their prison but was the result of a government mandate that effectively banned thousands of religious books from prisons.
According to the Associated Press, the Department of Justice feared that, in the wake of 9/11, there might be some books on prison library shelves that could incite prisoners to violence.
But instead of investigating which books in prison libraries might actually incite violence, government officials decided to put years of library building to waste by creating a list of up to 150 books per religion that were deemed "acceptable" for library shelves.
Furthermore, a New York Times follow-up story revealed that some of the book choices were just plain weird.
For instance, Timothy Larson of Wheaton College said the list of Christian books showed a bias toward "evangelical popularism and Calvinism" and against books by "early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations."
And since the government did not provide any funding to actually buy the books on the list, some prison libraries have only a handful of religious books left.
This story is disturbing on many different levels. For instance, it brings up the age-old question of the relationship between church and state.
Now we're finding out that this was the least of our worries. Apparently, the government now has the power to choose what books can be found in libraries.
The story starts just two months ago, when Moshe Milstein and John Okon, an Orthodox Jew and a Protestant confined in an upstate New York prison, filed a lawsuit claiming that hundreds of religious books, which could previously be found in their prison chapel libraries, were now gone.
After some investigation, the two inmates discovered that the "great prison library purge" was not unique to their prison but was the result of a government mandate that effectively banned thousands of religious books from prisons.
According to the Associated Press, the Department of Justice feared that, in the wake of 9/11, there might be some books on prison library shelves that could incite prisoners to violence.
But instead of investigating which books in prison libraries might actually incite violence, government officials decided to put years of library building to waste by creating a list of up to 150 books per religion that were deemed "acceptable" for library shelves.
Furthermore, a New York Times follow-up story revealed that some of the book choices were just plain weird.
For instance, Timothy Larson of Wheaton College said the list of Christian books showed a bias toward "evangelical popularism and Calvinism" and against books by "early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations."
And since the government did not provide any funding to actually buy the books on the list, some prison libraries have only a handful of religious books left.
This story is disturbing on many different levels. For instance, it brings up the age-old question of the relationship between church and state.