Editorial: Denormalizing Censorship Inside Carceral Facilities

Abstract

The control of access to information is an intrinsic feature of American incarceration, established in the earliest models for contemporary juvenile detention centers, jails, and prisons. From claims to spiritual salvation to fears of disruption, censorship inside of carceral facilities has been implemented under assumptions of threat to social order—including through white supremacist ideas that the cultural, social, and political traditions and ideas of Black, Indigenous, and people of color must be suppressed. The arbitrary and convoluted nature of censorship inside, as illustrated in the commentaries and article in this issue, are part and parcel of the labyrinthine and opaque functions of carceral facilities.