Prison book ban overturned in High Court

The government’s ban on prisoners being sent books has been ruled unlawful by the High Court.

The book ban was introduced in November as part of a scheme to limit what prisoners can receive in parcels. As the BBC reports, the government claimed that the measure was partly an attempt to crack down on drugs getting into prisons, and partly a move to make prisoners "earn" their “privileges”. Prisoners were still able to borrow books from prison libraries, but such libraries have often been argued to be inadequately stocked and even inaccessible at times, due to a lack of available staff to escort prisoners while they borrow books.

Prisoners argued that books could be central to their rehabilitation, while the judge presiding over the case, Mr Justice Collins, said it was "strange" that books should be seen by the government as a privilege.

Collins said: "I see no good reason in the light of the importance of books for prisoners to restrict beyond what is required by volumetric control and reasonable measures relating to frequency of parcels and security considerations…In the light of the statement made about the importance of books... to refer to them as a privilege is strange."