Guides: 2024 Reparations Priority Bill Package: New California Laws Taking Effect : AB-1986 State prisons: banned books.

Bill Summary and Finding Legislative History

AB-1986 State prisons: banned books.

AB-1986 was introduced in January 2024 by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) and signed into law on September 26, 2024 as 2024 Cal. Stat. ch. 620. The act amends Section 6132 of, and adds Section 6130 to, the Cal. Penal Code. You can find the bill text, bill analysis, and other documents relating to this law's legislative history on the California legislature's website.

See our California legislative history guide for information on how these documents all work together as persuasive legal authority in determining the intent behind the law as well as clarifying significant additions or deletions as the bill moved through the legislature.

AB-1986 Bill Summary (via Legislative Counsel's Digest)

Existing law grants a person sentenced to imprisonment the right to purchase, receive, and read any and all newspapers, periodicals, and books, as specified, subject to restrictions reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.
Existing law authorizes the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to prescribe and amend rules and regulations for the administration of state prisons, including determining which materials are a threat to legitimate penological interests.
Existing law creates the Office of the Inspector General and grants the Inspector General responsibility for oversight of the department, as specified.

This bill would require the Office of the Inspector General to post the Centralized List of Disapproved Publications maintained by the department on the office’s internet website and would require the department to notify the office each time a change is made to that list.
The bill would authorize the office, upon request, to review publications on the list to determine if it concurs with the department’s determination that the publication violates department regulations.
The bill would require the office to notify the department if it does not concur with the department’s determination.
The bill would also require the office to include information relating to those notifications in an annual report the Inspector General provides to the Governor and Legislature.

Related Books and Articles at the LRC

Banned Books behind Bars: Prototyping a Data Repository to Combat Arbitrary Censorship Practices in U.S. Prisons
Kate Cauley
9 Humanities 131 (2020)
Abstract: “Banned Books Behind Bars” is a social justice project that aims to shed light on the complex problem of information access in prison and to explore potential prototypes for possible solutions to some of these obstacles, in particular access to books and printed information. The United States is home to five percent of the world’s population but a staggering twenty-five percent of the world’s total prisoners. For many incarcerated individuals, access to information is a struggle: censorship, book banning, and lack of adequate library facilities or collections are common. Over the course of conducting preliminary research, this project evolved through the research process of ideation. Through the participatory action research method, qualitative interviews with volunteers from banned books organizations helped to identify potential digital tools meant to aid in the fight against the First Amendment violations that incarcerated individuals face daily. Furthermore, the interviews clarified that the first step toward creating an impactful digital project involves converting various forms of unstructured data, including newspaper articles, prison censorship forms, and state published banned book lists, into structured data. Through this discovery, “Banned Books Behind Bars” became an endeavor to standardize practices of data aggregation amongst banned books organizations throughout the country. Gathering concrete data about the practice of banning books within prisons requires an elevated level of transparency. Incarcerated individuals, their families, and prison reform activists need a platform for reporting data on censorship practices, and, ultimately, for bringing awareness to the arbitrary application of censorship guidelines within the complex world of incarceration. The final prototype is a digital repository, created with Airtable software, which offers authoritative dataset consolidation for activists and organizations working to deliver books to prisoners.

Reading Is My Window by Megan Sweeney
Call Number: Online
ISBN: 1469604361
Publication Date: 2014
Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures. Foregrounding the voices of African American women, Sweeney analyzes how prisoners read three popular genres: narratives of victimization, urban crime fiction, and self-help books. She outlines the history of reading and education in U.S. prisons, highlighting how the increasing dehumanization of prisoners has resulted in diminished prison libraries and restricted opportunities for reading. Although penal officials have sometimes endorsed reading as a means to control prisoners, Sweeney illuminates the resourceful ways in which prisoners educate and empower themselves through reading. Given the scarcity of counseling and education in prisons, women use books to make meaning from their experiences, to gain guidance and support, to experiment with new ways of being, and to maintain connections with the world.

Banned Books in Prison
Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom (ALA Intell. Freedom Comm., Chicago, Ill.), January 1, 2012, at 7.
Call Number: Online and LRC Reading Room KF4770.A15 N48
When Mark Melvin asked his friend to order him a Pulitzer Prize-winning history book, he didn't expect to have to file a lawsuit in order to read it But Melvin is currently in jail, and the book in question, Slavery By Another Name, by Douglas A Blackmon, was returned to its sender by officials at the Kilby Correctional Facility near Montgomery, Alabama, who allegedly claimed it to be "a security threat" His case highlights the arbitrary censorship faced every day by America's prisoners at the hands of over-zealous officials, who deprive prisoners of access to thousands of books, magazines and newspapers...

2024 Reparations Priority Bill Package: New California Laws Taking Effect

Bill Summary and Finding Legislative History

AB-1986 State prisons: banned books.

AB-1986 Bill Summary (via Legislative Counsel's Digest)

Related Books and Articles at the LRC

Practice Materials and Guidance