Why I’m So Desperate for the Return of Microsoft Word to Our Prison Library

This article is part of Prison Banned Books Week, a campaign that aims to raise awareness of prison censorship. Every morning, Anthony Arriaga, 47, serving his 21st year for a murder conviction, is one of the first men to enter the Sullivan Correctional Facility’s Law Library after me. Recently, administrative clerk Keith “Born King” Douglas, doing time for drug trafficking, pulled up the prison rule governing the operation of the law library and read it aloud: “The law library should be equipped with a sufficient amount of working typewriters, word processors or computers.” I pointed to the screen at the word “or,” signaling that access to word processors wasn’t mandatory. He slapped open a manila folder to reveal a civil deposition addressed to Corinne Leone, the director of Law Library Services: “Why do we have outdated typewriters when we have tablets?” Related From Slate “Is There a Right Way to Forgive?” Lessons From One Prison Classroom Through the service provider JPay, the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision provides incarcerated people with tablets, which allow us to send and receive secure emails to our family and friends. On a recent trip to the law library, I opened LexisNexis and typed “AI” in the search field: 1,777 results popped up in the New York Law Journal.