The New Jim Crow, an award-winning book by Michelle Alexander published in 2010, appears on lists of publications that inmates in state correctional facilities may not possess. New Jersey officials say they'll lift ban on book The New Jim Crow in prisons Read moreThe American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which obtained the banned book lists in response to a public records request, called for the ban to be lifted and said it violated the rights of inmates under the first amendment to the US constitution. America's new Jim Crow system | Michelle Alexander Read moreSubtitled “Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, Alexander’s book spent several weeks on US bestseller lists and was hailed as the “secular bible of a new social movement” by the academic Cornel West. It argues that the American criminal justice system amounts to “a contemporary system of racial control”, decades after the abolition of slavery and so-called “Jim Crow” laws that enforced racial segregation. The newly released records, which were not clearly labelled by state authorities, indicated that Alexander’s book was banned at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton and Southern State Correctional Facility in Delmont.

Source: The Guardian January 08, 2018 12:00 UTC