A Song of Ice and Fire among thousands of books banned in Kansas prisons
By Ariba Bhuvad
HBO’s Game of Thrones stirred up plenty of controversy over the years, but George R.R. Martin A Song of Ice and Fire books have been doing it for a lot longer. As Newsweek reports, Martin’s novels are among the many, many books banned inside Kansas state prisons. Just take a look at the ridiculously long list of banned books here. You get the idea there are books that haven’t been banned.
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But not really. Over 7,000 books are banned in the Kansas prison system, which isn’t most of the books in the world but is still a lot, second only to the Texas prison system, where around 15,000 books are banned.
Over the past 20 years, Kansas prisons have full-on blocked thousands of books from coming in to its prisons. They refer to is as “censored literature”. Books to Prisoners, an organization that does what you think it would, took to social media to share their outrage.
We just received the banned books list from KDOC & it's unbelievable. Kansas has fewer than 10,000 prisoners, yet more than 7,000 books are banned for them, from "A Clockwork Orange" to "Are Prisons Obsolete?"
— Books to Prisoners (Seattle) (@B2PSeattle) May 29, 2019
RT with the most absurd book you find! https://t.co/8JDgrM4NLU
The Books to Prison organizer and Public Records Manager at the HRDC, Michelle Dillon, spoke to Newsweek about this whole debacle. As it ends up, the Song of Ice and Fire books aren’t banned because of their violence or sexual content; they’ve banned because they have maps inside. “You know, somehow it could lead to a prisoner escaping to Westeros,” Dillon quipped.
Seriously, is the map going to lead to a secret tunnel that takes you all the way to the Red Keep? If only.
Kansas Department of Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz talked a little about the criteria by which books are banned:
"While this list reflects censorship activity during the past 15 years, the standards by which items are placed on the list have evolved over time. For instance, role playing publications were not allowed within the facility at one time. However, this is no longer a blanket practice. Also, at one time, depictions of guns in magazines were not allowed. However, this practice has changed and photographs of guns are now allowed. The censorship list does not reflect these changes because our practice is that each publication is reviewed as it enters a facility."
He also goes on to say that they will be reviewing the current list to see where changes can be made. I note, by the way, that for every single A Song of Ice and Fire book, the decision to ban it was appealed, but affirmed. Most of the banned books don’t get appealed, so someone must be pushing for it. The criminals of Kansas have spoken! Give them Westeros!
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