This prison won’t let inmates read the Song of Ice and Fire novels—Here’s why

Most of us probably don’t need extra motivation to avoid jail, but if you do, one Maryland prison is giving it to you. For inmates at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels have been added to the list of contraband items. Writing for the non-profit journal The Marshall Project, inmate Kimberly Hricko revealed that alongside items like glitter, greeting cards and cash, one of Martin’s novels was recently withheld from her mail.

"A “Game of Thrones” book was withheld because it contained maps. Maps are contraband. I guess I won’t be escaping to Westeros!"

According to Penn Live, prisons in Pennsylvania also have a blanket ban on maps, apparently because they could contain information about escape methods. Obviously the people in charge aren’t distinguishing between actual maps and maps of, y’know, places that don’t exist. The map in A Clash of Kings might help a prisoner navigate the Riverlands, but it won’t help them get around Maryland.

This is just one example of the unexpected items some prisons consider contraband, although they don’t all do it for the same reasons. Sticking with maps in Pennsylvania, a travel brochure about the Scenic Route 6 trail in the Pennsylvania wilds was banned under a policy restricting pornography “where one of the participants is dominating one of the other participants and one of the individuals is in a submissive role or one of the participants is degraded, humiliated or willingly engages in behavior that is degrading or humiliating.” Another brochure for the same area was banned for allegedly advocating “violence, insurrection or guerrilla warfare against the government.”

What the hell is in these brochures?

The prison system takes the possibility of escape very seriously — Pennsylvania also bans books like Astral Travel for Beginners, lest prisoners escape by having an out-of-body experience.

Meanwhile, when inmates in one Texas prison want to escape to a fantasy world, they have to make their own cardboard boxes picked up from inmate workers. So says former correctional officer Jeremy George:

"Once during a unit lockdown, the inmates cubicles/property were being searched for contraband, when a Lt. saw a detailed gaming map during the search. He took it, thinking it was some kind of escape plan/ unit map, but I quickly explained it was just a [Dungeons & Dragons] map. He dropped the matter calling me a nerd! Ha!"

Again, not all prisons ban the Song of Ice and Fire books, which is part of the issue — there doesn’t seem to be much consistency across state lines, or maybe even within them. But on the plus side, if inmates only get access to Martin’s novels late in the game, they’ll have less time to wait for The Winds of Winter…

Next: And now Elon Musk has dropped by the Game of Thrones set

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h/t Penn Live, WayPoint