[AnotherCat]

In my own country prisoners are allowed a limited number of books and magazines but it is not unrestricted in type or the getting. Before admittance of them to the prison they have to be asked for and preapproved. Also all prisons have a library which is tailored to the type of prisoners incarcerated such as age, gender, remand, security level, literacy, etc.. The common policy of the prison libraries includes a reference to the care and security of the books in the risky environment.

I would have thought that US prisons would have libraries too, perhaps not but I would be surprised if not (in fact the article refers to prison libraries). In my country public libraries will often inter-loan books to other libraries if a locally asked for book is not available. I would suspect that a prisoner with a special request, and their behavior and the book type allowing, could make such a request through the prison library - is that not possible in the USA? That may only be in quite special cases here though due to the risk to the book.

Regarding prisoners themselves. Some years back while I was doing a consulting assignment for a big video production company they were making a half hour documentary about a prisoner rehabilitation project involving inmates learning a particular craft. I went along with the crew on prison visits and we could mix and talk without restriction with groups of low and medium security prisoners. Even though they would have represented the more trusted inmates I came away with a better understanding as to why there were rules that may seem unfair, but which are likely entirely relevant to prisoners who struck me as generally being untrustworthy and losers, unused to or not recognizing societies rules, and inclined to take selfish advantages of "fairness".