This week our co-operative joined friends at Asheville Prison Books and Emancipate NC to challenge the arbitrary banning of virtually all books by the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDOC).

This illegal and unconscionable restriction of reading material is impacting thousands of individuals currently imprisoned. In a letter to the Director of the of the SCDOC we announced our intention to cooperate with prisoners and their families to bring a suit against the state if it fails to reverse its appalling new publication policy.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ASHEVILLE PRISON BOOKS AND FIRESTORM BOOKS CHALLENGE SCDOC BOOK BAN

Asheville, NC (January 20th, 2023) – The South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDOC) recently banned all books from SC prisons within its jurisdictional domain with the extremely limited, and arbitrary exception of four book purveyors (see section 9). The SCDOC has initiated this ban under the guise of stopping contraband from entering prisons, yet in doing so the SCDOC has eliminated book distributors such as Asheville Prison Books and Firestorm Books. Firestorm and Asheville Prison Books have sent books to incarcerated readers for years without incident. In fact, Asheville Prison Books has served incarcerated readers inside SC prisons for 27 years without incident. Asheville Prison Books still serves readers incarcerated within federal prisons in SC as well as all state and federal prisons in NC. With a volume of 300 to 500 books sent inside per month Asheville Prison Books has an impeccable record.

We, along with our legal counsel, believe that in creating such a widespread ban on books and book purveyors the SCDOC is in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. On January 13, 2026, our counsel notified the SCDOC that they have 30 days to bring their policies into compliance with federal Constitution law or face a lawsuit. The legal questions at hand and the issue of prisoners’s rights extend well beyond the Carolinas. This fight has national importance as prisoners’s rights and their access to books are under threat nationwide.

There are innumerable reports and articles that show that incarcerated readers already face the most significant censorship in the United States regarding their reading material. This ban illegally further limits access to reading material. Furthermore, many of the readers that prison books programs such as Asheville Prison Books serve have no assistance from family or anyone on the outside. Without books from us they do not have easy access to dictionaries (the most requested book), trade manuals, fiction, or any reading material whatsoever. Our legal team is helping us fight these unconstitutional policies so that we can get books back into the hands of a population that desperately desires and needs them.

Since South Carolina has one of the highest incarceration rates per capita in the world, the denial of access to books to its incarcerated readers is significant, especially when one considers the racial disparities of incarceration in South Carolina where Black and Brown folks are over five times as likely 1to be incarcerated as the white population. According to Dr. Mac Marquis of Asheville Prison Books “Repression and violations of human rights are on the rise throughout the US, but nowhere is this felt more keenly than behind prison walls. The arbitrary and capricious denial of reading material to thousands of incarcerated people is morally, ethically, and legally bankrupt and will neither make prisons nor society safer.” Libertie Valance of Firestorm Books similarly observes, “Obstructing prisoners' access to books is a disgraceful attack on one of our most basic freedoms: the freedom of thought, which allows us to explore ideas, pursue self-education, or escape into fantasy if we choose. When someone is convicted of a crime they do not forfeit the right to develop their mind.”

For legal inquiries please contact:

For media inquiries please contact:

Dr. Mac Marquis, Ph.D
ahsevilleprisonbooks@gmail.com

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