05/30/2026
A new article about the TDCJ book ban from and .writes01_12 that went into effect on April 1st. The book ban is unnecessary & harmful. Requiring only new & "new looking" books has nothing to do with contraband getting into TDCJ. What it actually does is keep books out of the hands of people that have no other way to get access to literature. Because of this new policy, we've had to already turn down hundreds of donations because there is some writing or underlining on pages.
We encourage people to reach out to their local state reps and tell TDCJ that prison book projects are NOT sending drugs into prisons & that they should end the ban for book projects.
What's not mentioned by TDCJ is that, according to a P.I.A. rqst in March 2025, of the 385 books "flagged for contraband" (out of more than 450,000 in one year) less than 100 were actually found to have contraband and TDCJ will not say what that "contraband" is and if they're testing tech showed "false positives" - some tech has up to a 50% false positive rate. So that's less than 100 books out of 450,000 in a year. Sounds like the drug problem isn't actually coming from books 🤔🤔
Thank you for covering this.
Inmates say the policy unfairly punishes them — and note that prison staff also bring in contraband.
