Texas Prisons Ban Books By Bob Dole, Mein Kampf Still Okay

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has banned 15,000 books from it's facilities. According to the TDCJ, there are 6 reasons for books to be banned, which include sexually explicit images, encouraging deviant criminal sexual behavior, and containing information on criminal schemes. You can see the full report on banning books in the Texas prison system here.

Dan Slater's new book called "Wolf Boys:Two American Teenagers and Mexico’s Most Dangerous Drug Cartel" which is about two Texas boys who join an infamous Mexican cartel, the Zetas,  It's a non-fiction book and both teenagers are housed in Texas prisons.

"TDCJ has let its book-banning policy go far beyond what is necessary, permitting uneducated mailroom officers and Huntsville administrators to censor speech on political grounds or simply block books from going to inmates that prison workers do not like," Slater wrote, referring to the city where the prison system headquarters is located. "If what matters is balancing security with free speech and the rehabilitation of inmates, no policy could be more errant."

Books that contain the N-word are often targeted by censors. So books by Langston Hughes, Noam Chomsky, Philip Roth, Richard Wright and Salman Rushdie have been banned. Yet, Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and even racist manifestos by David Duke have not been banned.

There's your head scratcher of the day.