Dylan Pyles News Today

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled this week that the wording on the ballot mandating the increased funding was misleading.

A book is not always just a book. Volunteers who mail books to people in prison said they see proof of that in the requests they get every day. A sign language dictionary for a man whose child was losing their hearing meant connection to family. Books for a woman taking a course behind bars was her path to a degree. A Buddhist workbook was comfort for a man on death row.

“Are we truly treating them like human beings if we keep them locked up and they can’t have their day in court because they’re not getting treated?” said Clay County Sheriff Will Akin.

We’re not just seeing banned books in schools, we're seeing books being labeled as contraband in our prisons as well.

Missouri inmates will no longer be able to receive books from friends or family under a new policy adopted by the Department of Corrections.

On Sept. 25, the recent policy change will ban any incarcerated individuals in Missouri prisons to recieve books from friends and family.

“It’s a bad policy. It’s not how most contraband gets in anyway,” a prisoner at Chillicothe Correctional Center told The Star.

The new, more restrictive policy goes into effect Sept. 25.

The policy comes more than a year after the Missouri Department of Corrections banned people from receiving paper mail in prison.

Dylan Pyles, co-founder of Kansas City-based group Liberation Lit, regarding Missouri’s new rule that will prohibit people incarcerated in state prisons from receiving books and other publications from friends and family starting Sept. 25 in an attempt to reduce the influx of drugs and other contraband into the facilities. Incarcerated people will now be required to buy their own books, magazines, newspapers and correspondence courses. The base salary for incarcerated people working in a priso...