NPR

Under Fire From ACLU, New Jersey Reverses Ban On Book About Mass Incarceration

Critics said New Jersey puts black residents behind bars at a rate 12 times the rate of white residents and it's unconstitutional to deny those inmates access to information in the book.

The New Jersey Department of Corrections has lifted a ban on a book that links racial discrimination and mass incarceration after the ACLU called the prohibition unconstitutional and demanded the department reverse its position.

Inmates at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton and Southern State Correctional Facility in Delmont were barred from reading Michelle Alexander's 2010 book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The ACLU New Jersey chapter made the discovery as a result of a public records request.

In a to the state's Department of Corrections on Monday the ACLU demanded the

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