So, does violent reading material incite already convicted violent criminals...?
"Connecticut State Senator John Kissel (R-Enfield) met October 6 with state Department of Corrections Commissioner Leo Arnone to discuss the removal of books containing graphic violence from Connecticut prison-library collections. The meeting took place several days after jurors returned a guilty verdict for the first of two defendants in the murder of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters Hayley and Michaela in their Chesire, Connecticut, home, and the brutal beating of their husband and father William Petit."
"Somebody that is moved to commit a crime has much more going on in their lives than simply having read a few comic books or a novel or In Cold Blood,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy executive director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told the AP October 3. Like the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom's deputy executive director, Deborah Caldwell, I find it difficult to wrap my head around how "somebody that is moved to commit a crime has much more going on in their lives than simply having read a few comic books or a novel or In Cold Blood." Seriously.
Although I know very little about the powerful American constitutional law which favours the rights of the individual, I do believe that the proponents of this recommendation will face formidable foes in the American Civil Liberties Union and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
So, what do you think? Would keeping violent reading material including classics like "In Cold Blood" out of the hands of incarcerated violent criminals assist with reducing recidivism and rehabilitation? Is this simply outright censorship on a huge population of society with very few rights remaining? Does this issue merit any real debate?
Over to you...
No debate. We should be able to read whatever we want -period, end of story. In jail, out of jail, on a bus, in a school library.
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