Connecticut Inmate Sues for Access to Art Books
A Connecticut prisoner is suing the state after he was denied access to three art books and another on childbirth, all of which appear to meet the guidelines for books that should be allowed under a Department of Correction policy designed to bar pornography from prisons. Dwight Pink Jr was convicted of murder along with six other charges in 2002 and is currently serving a 50-year sentence at the Cheshire Correctional Institution. Earlier this year he tried to have four books sent to him in prison: Atlas of Foreshortening: The Human Figure in Deep Perspective; Art Models 7: Dynamic Figures for the Visual Arts; Shameless Art: 20th Century Genre and the Artists that Defined It; and Gentle Birth Choices. Although a prison ban on books featuring “sexual activity or nudity” was instituted in 2011, all four of these books appear to fall into categories that are theoretically exempted from the ban: “materials which, taken as a whole, are literary, artistic, educational or scientific in nature.” Former Connecticut Correction Commissioner Leo Arnone enacted the ban in 2011 “to improve the work environment for prison staffers, especially female staffers, who might be inadvertently exposed to pornography.” Regardless of Pink’s intended use for […]