Posted on August 3, 2022 at 10:03 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
It's arts and crafts time in the New York state prison system.
Heather Ann Thompson, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the 1971 Attica Correctional Facility uprising, had sued New York upon learning her work was banned in state prisons.
The New York Times reports that the state attorney general's office has asked that the lawsuit be dropped, because the system is now allowing prisoners to read Blood in the Water — with a catch.
A two-page map of the Attica facility will be cut out of every copy "for security reasons," and since one of those pages also includes a list of deaths, that information will be photocopied and inserted in.
However, this still raises concerns for Thompson, whose lawyers have asked a judge not to dismiss the lawsuit because officials could easily reverse course and stop providing the redacted copies.
You can read more about the debate over Blood in the Water (and what its incarcerated readers have told Thompson) in the NY Times.
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Categories: Today in Books