New York officials are cutting and inserting pages from a book about the state’s most notorious prisons in an attempt to settle a festering First Amendment dispute.
Historian Heather Ann Thompson has earned acclaim for her Pulitzer Prize-winning work “Blood in the Water,” a poignantly reported investigation into the deadly 1971 Attica uprising and its legacy. . But since the book was published in 2016, one group has been banned from reading it: those held at the Attica Correctional Facility and other New York state prisons. Ms. Thompson sued in March, seeking to overturn the ban.
Last week, the state attorney general’s office wrote to a federal judge in Manhattan, saying Ms. Thompson’s case should be dismissed. The office said that editing officials have decided that New York’s “incarcerated population” can now view the paperback edition of “Blood in the Water” — with one exception.
A two-page map of the Attica Correctional Facility, which appears on the front of the paperback, will be removed for “security reasons,” the state attorneys general wrote. The reverse side of one of the removed pages, which lists people who died in the uprising, will be included as an inserted copy, the lawyers said.
If an inmate has ordered a hard copy of “Blood in the Water,” for which the map appears on the back cover, the department will provide a redacted paperback version instead, the attorneys wrote.
The dispute comes as parents, school officials and lawmakers around the country increasingly demand that books on topics such as sex and racial identity be removed from libraries and curricula. Officials have tried to justify bans on books in prisons by arguing that certain types of information, like instructions on how to make weapons or how to escape prisons, can be legally denied .
It is New York’s policy to “encourage prisoners to read publications from a variety of sources if such material discourages them from engaging in conduct that may disrupt the operation of an orderly establishment.” For example, publications may not depict locking down techniques or inciting disobedience to law enforcement personnel.
The Attic revolt half a century ago was a great occasion of disobedience. An attack by hundreds of heavily armed state soldiers ended four days of violence at a maximum-security prison 350 miles from New York City. The uprising left 43 people dead, including 10 guards and civilian employees held hostage by prisoners.
In researching her book, Mrs. Thompson, a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Michigan, spent more than a decade poring over court records and crates of artifacts and other records. , as well as interviewing former corrections officers, relatives, and other witnesses. .. The book is 571 pages long with over 100 pages of footnotes.
Ms. Thompson, in an interview, said she has received letters from many readers of “Blood in the Country”, who are incarcerated across the United States or who have served sentences, and others working in prisons.
“There is a profound curiosity about what happened at Attica,” Ms. Thompson said. “There is a real, honest, real desire to know what happened all these years ago.”
“There hasn’t been a hint from those people that this is in any way inciting or biased,” she added.
Ms. Thompson’s lawsuit seeks, among other things, an injunction banning the Department of Community Editing and Oversight from preventing distribution of the book and a system by which Ms. Thompson will be notified if the agency censors copies. she sent to a prisoner.
The lawsuit says that in addition to Attica, other prisons where her book was persecuted were Bedford Hills, Eastern, Franklin, Great Meadow, Mohawk, Orleans, Otisville, Southport, and Ulster correctional facilities.
On Monday, her lawyers wrote to Judge Edgardo Ramos, arguing that the case should not be dismissed.
Without a judge’s order, there is no guarantee that the corrections agency, known as DOCCS, “won’t go back to their old ways,” said her attorneys, Antony PF Gemmell of the Liberal Union. Civilian New York and Betsy Ginsberg, director of the civil rights clinic at Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School.
Thomas Mailey, a spokesman for the proofreading, declined to comment on pending litigation but said that as of May, paperback copies with the removed map were allowed.
Ms. Thompson, in her interview, noted that one of the main problems causing the uprising in Attica was the censorship of correctional officials.
“The men inside Attica are generally not allowed to read the letters sent to them,” she said. “They are usually not allowed to read the books that will come to them in the mail. And one of the things they just asked for is the basic recognition that they are human and that they have the right to read. “
Ms. Thompson’s lawsuit addresses several instances where she was not notified when copies of her book were blocked from being accessed by people at Attica or other state prisons.
In February 2019, she sent a copy to Lenny Emiliano, who at the time was in Attica and who was told by a captain there that he would not receive the book.
“I didn’t like it at all,” Mr Emiliano said in a statement through Ms. Ginsberg. There have been “lots of different stories” told about the Attic uprising, he said, “and if you let the DOCCS tell you what happened, then they disclaim any responsibility or actions that led to it. to that uprising. “
Kevin Mays, who lived in Otisville when he heard Thompson talk about his book on the Brian Lehrer radio show, was twice blocked from receiving copies sent by his wife, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit describes Mr Mays, who has been convicted of armed robberies, as an “avid reader” who has worked in the prison law library for more than 20 years. He said in a phone interview that it’s important for detainees “to be able to keep their mind on how one of the most horrific acts of violence in New York State actually happened.” out” and “learn from it so it doesn’t happen again.”
He said he finally read the book after being released from prison in 2019.
