More than 200 books banned, removed from Danville Prison

DANVILLE, Ill. (WICS/WCCU) — More than 200 books vanished from the Danville Correctional Center library in late January.

It’s an ongoing issue that started last November.

Books were being removed, banned and confiscated – the majority of them dealt with race.

"The books had something in common - they were overwhelmingly about black history and the black experience,” said Rebecca Ginsburg, director of the award-winning program at the prison.

The books are used by the University of Illinois’ Education Justice Project.

According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, the books didn't go through the proper review process before going on the shelves.

Currently, the books, like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and Booker T. Washington's autobiography, are sitting in boxes at the University of Illinois.

"This is the first time anything of this magnitude has happened,” said Ginsburg.

For 10 years, the Education Justice Project has been teaching in the Danville Prison. It's part of a college-in-prison program.

In January, Ginsburg said the program was suspended, but she never got a reason.

Weeks later, it was brought back on one condition — certain pages needed to be torn out of the books.

"It hurts my heart to even say that because it is a very raw and ugly image of people literally tearing pages from readers,” Ginsburg said.

But things only got worse.

Rebecca Ginsburg later learned prison staff removed even more books from the library.

"I don't know if the people who removed the books knew how nerved they were by removing books that deal with black history and the Holocaust from a university library,” she said.

According to the Illinois Department of Correction, the books removed didn't go through the right review process before going on the shelves.

But there is no exact way of checking which books were approved or not.

"Each one enters the prison at a different time, in a different process,” Ginsburg said. “There is no stamp that goes on it once it's approved."

Illinois prisons do have the right to remove books, but Ginsburg hopes this wasn't out of spite.

"If this can happen to our program, it can happen to other programs as well,” she said.

Illinois is not the only state where it’s hard to get a book into prison. That's why a new campaign called the “Freedom to Learn” was started.

It hopes to get clear guidelines for the review process through legislation or new rules.