Texas prisons ban Monty Python book. Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ is OK though
Prisoners cannot read more than 10,000 titles but Hitler’s autobiography and two titles by former KKK wizard David Duke are not among them
Books including The Color Purple, Freakonomics and Monty Python’s Big Red Book are banned in Texas state prisons – but Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and two books by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke are not.
The Dallas Morning News reported the choices made by the Texas department of criminal justice (TDCJ) on behalf of thousands of inmates.
There are 248,281 approved titles for the state’s nearly 150,000 inmates to read, the paper said, and 10,073 that are banned. Also among the forbidden are a collection of Shakespeare sonnets, Where’s Waldo? Santa Spectacular and Homer Simpson’s Little Book of Laziness.
Satan’s Sorcery Volume I and 100 Great Poems of Love and Lust are allowed, as is James Battersby’s The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler, which is described on Amazon.com as “the Bible of neo-Nazism and of esoteric Hitlerism”.
What is or is not permissible in Texas prisons is largely decided by mailroom staff, the newspaper found.
Content and imagery are only part of the criteria applied; many books are banned because their bindings or covers could be used to smuggle contraband. For obvious reasons, maps are also banned.