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A comment on The American prison system’s war on reading. Parent comment

Re:The American prison system’s war on reading by chipgap98 on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @08:00PM (#29399422)
Does banning used books actually stop any of the communication between gang members? Do we have any idea how often books are used to incite violence versus how often they are just read? What percentage of prison violence comes from book encoding versus other means?

These seem questions you would have to answer before coming to the conclusion that banning books is the right answer here. "a lot of the people in prison are some seriously bad dudes" seems to imply that we can justify mistreatment of millions of Americans.

If there are problems with prison violence we should address those rather than just limiting access to books.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The American prison system’s war on reading by Eelongate on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @08:29PM (#29399616)
> Does banning used books actually stop any of the communication between gang members?

Definitely not, it's impossible to stop unless maybe you go full supermax and utterly isolate every prisoner from every other. And even then, they might still tap out messages to each other through the walls. You'd need very thick walls to prevent that I think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_code#History

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The American prison system’s war on reading by ohyeshedid on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @09:14PM (#29399881)
> Does banning used books actually stop any of the communication between gang members?

No, there are unlimited ways to fly a kite.

[ Parent | on HN ]