No Books for Prisoners

I read an article in the Wisconsin State Journal today about a program that sends free books to Wisconsin prison inmates that was shut down by prison officials. It's hard to tell who's right and who was being an ass, but I'd think that reading books is something we'd want to encourage in anybody, not to mention those in prison with probably a lot of time on their hands. The prison officials' argument was that the books could contain contraband - sealed into bindings or secret codes created by underlining certain words. Those books are dangerous things! You never know, inmates could hit someone over the head with a particularly large book. This whole idea that books are dangerous reminds me scarily of dystopian novels like Fahrenheit 451. If we let people read, they might start thinking too.