Book Censorship News, August 7, 2026

One of the comments frequently circulating in book banning communities and in pro-censorship stories is one that’s not only fundamentally cruel, it also exposes the whole hand of censorship advocates.

Why, they ask, if certain books are so explicit they’re banned in prisons, are they available in public schools and libraries for children to access?

Putting aside the blatantly partisan sources linked in some of the above examples, this argument that does two things. First, it takes advantage of the fact most people don’t know–and frankly, don’t care–how rampant book censorship is in America’s prisons. It is, in fact, the largest violation of the First Amendment in the nation. Second, it shows the ultimate goal that these leaders in the book banning movement have: removal of materials from public places for young people, either completely or as a means of infusing those institutions with biased materials that meet their own approval.

Likewise, the tools used to detect drugs are also bad at doing their job. In some cases, they produce 91% false positive results. Of course most books will ping with drugs laced in the cover or binding if most of the responses are going to be positive, whether or not it’s true.

Taking that information and applying it to school libraries says a lot more than those making the case for prison censorship logic to apply to school library censorship intend. There is nothing pornographic nor sexually explicit in school libraries. Such accusations come from the people who read everything with an eye to being offended and who read by only cherrypicking the passages that fit their cause. The Miller Test, the federal standard for obscenity, exists for a reason, and book banners have made it their mission to manipulate this standard for years, too.

If you always change the rules, you always get to be the one who interprets what they “really” mean.

The comparisons between prisons and public school censorship doesn’t stop there. Few prisons have libraries that are usable, accessible, or staffed by trained professionals. In rare instances where there are such facilities, it can be hard for those on the inside to access the libraries during open hours–they have limited free time and there need to be staff members available to take them to the library, to name a couple of reasons. This, too, parallels what it is book censors seek in their local schools. Those who have been engaged in freedom to read advocacy since 2021 have seen this as the goal for half a decade now. Others are finally catching up to this reality, as has been widely reported in Clay County, Florida, where one person has been singlehandedly responsible for getting hundreds of books banned from the district’s libraries. Now, officials question why they should have school libraries at all. That doesn’t account for the vast swaths of school librarians being laid off left and right, often the first victims of budget cuts; expect this to increase as voucher schemes continue to steal public education money to line the pockets of private institutions. And that’s if schools have school librarians at all.

The end game has always been decimation of libraries because decimation of libraries is decimation of opportunities to grow and to think independent of what someone else tells you to think.

It’s the actual doing of one’s own research.

Then there’s the prison industrial complex more broadly. In America, there are public prisons and there are private prisons, much as there are public and private schools. Public prisons operate using tax money; private prisons hold government contracts and profits from every person held within the facility. Every person held in a private person is more profit for the prison system, and thus, there’s less motivation to reduce recidivism nor provide access to those on the inside to information, education, or even entertainment through the pages of books or the doors of a library. Research shows that privatizing prisons leads to increased rates of incarceration and longer sentences. Private prisons are a business.

We can layer this on top of what we’re seeing in the school system, too. Consider the ongoing efforts to use public money to provide vouchers for (wealthy) parents to send their students to private, for-profit institutions, which don’t have to follow state laws related to book bans, nor do they need to follow federal guidelines for equitable access to education, nor, frankly, do they have to care about educating young people at all. Those creating hostile public school systems via censorship force voucher programs, developing a two-tiered system of educational access and being able to control exactly the kind of information their children do or do not receive. It’s not a prison system, but it is a parallel system of control over bodies and minds of young people.

None of that touches upon the predatory tablet and ebook systems imposed in prisons that end up costing those on the inside a lot of money, for very little access to anything of value.

Then there’s this: the National Book Rating Index–one of the unprofessional tools being used to help facilitate book banning–includes as part of its assessment of titles indexed by The Marshall Project as banned in U.S. prisons.

The creators of the National Book Rating Index really did decide to include information compiled to showcase the often wildly illogical and slapdash ways titles are banned from prisons as justification for why books should be banned in public schools. That decision was not only because book banners see children as people they should be able to control like incarcerated individuals but also because the banned titles from prisons do include titles that would be considered sexually explicit, pornographic, or inappropriate for children–even if not a single edition of 365 Sex Positions or How to Make Money Like a Porn Star would ever be inside a school library.

Being able to put these two things near one another is enough to stoke panic and offload the work of explaining what it means. “See for yourself!” is good enough.

Justice-impacted individuals on the inside deserve access to wide and diverse array of literature and information. They deserve access to staffed libraries, with dedicated time in the day to visit those libraries. But providing resources that reduce recidivism–something we know to be true–doesn’t benefit the prison industrial complex. We also know prisons more broadly are a legacy of slavery and that because marginalized individuals comprise the largest majority of those on the inside, they continue to be the least seen by the rest of a society built by white supremacy.

Book banners want a world where they can censor whatever they want, wherever they want, for any reason they want in order to construct a world that strictly adheres to those very constrains of white supremacy. Choosing to equate prison bans with school access allows them to say the racist thing without outright saying the racist thing because, of course, these very same people “aren’t racist” and “aren’t banning (diverse) books.” It also sheds light in how they view public education: little more than a prison, where the people on the inside don’t deserve to be seen as fully human, with their own hopes, dreams, voices, and rights.

Perhaps, too, we need to flip this script entirely and ask a different question: if students have access to a rich collection of books in their schools, why are they being withheld from legal adults experiencing incarceration?

Liberation should be for everyone.

But for censors, such liberation is exactly the thing they fear. Their power and ability to control the narrative get questioned and they have no answers to those questions.

Book Censorship News: August 7, 2026

• Penguin Random House, alongside several coplaintiffs, have filed a new lawsuit over Iowa’s Senate File 496, the state’s book banning law. The plaintiffs are focusing on the banning of nine specific titles. It’s really disappointing to see that the LGBTQ+ books have been abandoned in the fight over this bigoted law.
• Two House Reps–one from Washington and one from Missouri–have introduced a bill that would fund a study at state and federal prisons and the impact libraries make within them.
• What’s behind the moral panic that led to book removal in Elizabeth School District (CO)? A look at the case, slated for hearings in federal district court in December.
• Christian County Library Board (MO), which was overtaken by far-right folks, has added new policies making relocation of material they deem inappropriate for an array of reasons–being “sexually explicit” or having “excessive strong language”–much easier. Here’s a banger of a paragraph: “Prior to these policies being discussed July 28 and at previous meetings, a group of community members had highlighted books that they argue are appropriate to have in sections designated for children or teens. They have said it is unfair to place the responsibility fully on parents who may not know what materials the library has.” Either parents have rights and thus can exercise them, as we’ve heard for years now, or they’re helpless and need the library to do the parenting for them. It is unfair to make parents be parents is WILD.
• The Massachusetts governor has an anti-book ban bill on his desk for signing.
• Santa Rosa Schools (FL) have voted to change their book review process. The superintendent alone is now the one who’ll decide whether or not books are banned. Santa Rosa is home to one of the country’s most prolific book banners.
• A Texas State Senator is telling Lubbock Independent School District what books he says are “filth” and need to be removed from the schools–and he’s happy with the progress they’re making. When we talk about big C censorship, this is it. A politician is dictating what your public schools can and cannot have in the library.
• After banning Roots to be in alignment with the state of Tennessee’s “Age Appropriate Materials Act,” Knox County Schools are changing their review policies and re-reviewing the books they’ve already banned.
• Fayetteville Public Library is weighing options after losing its court fight to stop an Arkansas state law that will ban untold numbers of books and jail librarians and booksellers.
• The ACLU and Texas A&M Professors have filed a lawsuit over university-sponsored censorship that has restricted speech, classroom lessons, and books on campus.
• The Central Oregonian newspaper does this thing where they reprint old news stories today, and this one from 50 years ago about two books being challenged at Crook County Library reads like it could just be printed today.
• Author and bookstore owner Ryan Holiday has opened a library for banned books in his Bastrop, Texas, independent bookstore. He was inspired after one of his talks was canceled by the US Naval Academy because he refused to remove slides critical of book banning.