Document Type

Honors Project

First Advisor

Dr. Maria Paz Esguerra

Degree Award Date

Spring 2026

Keywords

Prisons, Prisoners' Rights, Book Bans

Disciplines

American Politics | American Studies | Politics and Social Change | United States History

Abstract

The 1950s-1970s saw an unprecedented spike in organized resistance by American prisoners. This long era of rebellion, along with thousands of judicial appeals, made up the “prisoners’ rights movement”-- a political, legal, and social struggle that challenged the conditions of American incarceration and its penological paradigm. The timeline of the movement is abstract and difficult to measure. Nonetheless, what is certain is that it lost its momentum by the 1980s due to overhauling policy changes that quelled prisoner activism without achieving meaningful progress. This research examines the evolution of prison censorship policies within that paradigm shift and how they sought to achieve an intellectual repression of the movement by censoring materials thought to inspire disobedience. Though many such policies censor on the grounds of defending prisoners’ rehabilitation, a closer look at enforcement trends suggests that, in practice, it is the undisputed authority and permanence of the prison itself that is defended. Drawing from the banned-books data of Virginia State prisons, this paper theorizes that censorship policies violate prisoners’ right to read and access information as means of protecting the legitimacy of the carceral state through implicit political biases.

Recommended Citation

Jansen, Allie. "Book Bans in U.S. Prisons: A Legacy of the Prisoners' Rights Movement." Senior Honors Projects, Bridgewater College, 2026. 

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