The Arkansas Prison Book Ban

Psychological Impact

• Physical books reduce stress and cognitive overload.
• Screens increase fatigue and limit sustained focus.
• Loss of books removes one of the few calming, self directed tools inside prison.

The Contraband Argument Fails a Logic Test

Books shipped from approved vendors are inspected before reaching incarcerated people. If contraband enters through inspected materials, the failure is with operations, not the books themselves.

The Reentry Gap

Outdated and limited digital materials prepare people for a world that no longer exists which in turn starts increasing technical violations, unemployment, and reincarceration.

What ARI Is Verifying

As physical books have been restricted inside Arkansas prisons, the public narrative has shifted toward reassurance. Families and policymakers are repeatedly told that tablets provide a sufficient replacement because “the tablets have books now.” That statement is rarely interrogated, and it is almost never supported with documentation showing what content is actually accessible inside correctional tablet systems.

Arkansas Restorative Initiative is verifying whether incarcerated people can meaningfully access them. There is a critical difference between a public digital library being available online and that same content being licensed, approved, loaded, and usable on a correctional tablet operating inside a closed, monitored environment.

Two sources are most often cited when defending the elimination of physical books: Archive.org and Project Gutenberg. Both are legitimate public repositories of public-domain texts. Their existence, however, does not demonstrate access. The correctional tablets don't operate on open internet connections. Content must be explicitly selected by vendors, licensed, integrated into their systems, and approved at the facility level before it is ever visible to an incarcerated person.

What matters is what exists inside the tablet ecosystem. That ecosystem is shaped by vendor contracts, licensing limits, classification status, operating hours, and technical restrictions. Without documentation showing that specific content has been integrated into the system.

For this reason, ARI grounds its verification work in vendor documentation and facility reality. The Edovo catalog exhibit linked below reflects the type of controlled content list that determines what is actually available on tablets. While vendors may issue certificates of completion, those certificates are not automatically recognized by courts, parole boards, or probation authorities, and they do not substitute for accredited or court ordered programming. Catalog documentation, however, does establish the boundary between real access and public assumption.

For transparency, ARI provides the commonly cited public repositories alongside the Edovo catalog exhibit, so the public can see the difference between online availability and documented tablet access.

Public references:
Archive.org
Project Gutenberg (Top Titles)
Edovo Catalog Exhibit (Google Drive)