Prison bans George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire Books

Books are one of the few luxuries inmates in prisons do have access to and they can be essential when it comes to keeping the minds of the incarcerated stimulated. Generally speaking, most books are okay for prisoners to read, provided they’re first checked for hidden contraband, but it seems George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire has fallen foul of the law.

Since it was adapted to television by by HBO, the Song of Ice and Fire series, otherwise known as Game of Thrones, has become a huge hit among readers, even those who don’t generally read the fantasy genre. Sure, there’s dragons and magic, but the gritty real-world issues faced in the series is very akin to our own bloody history and much of the scheming and political backstabbing is still mirrored in the 21st century.

It’s not surprising that the series is read in prisons, but that has all changed since at least one prison in Maryland has decided the book could be used by prisoners to escape. Some particularly bulky or hardback books are banned from prisons, usually because they can easily be used by inmates to conceal contraband such as drugs or weapons, but that’s not why George R.R. Martin’s books have been banned. The reason, as the AV Club reports, is because they contain too many maps.

Maps are banned from most prisons in an effort to stop inmates from getting hold of a map of the area and planning an escape, but one has to wonder how maps of a fantasy land like Westeros are going to help a prisoner escape from a prison in Maryland, USA. The news comes via a very insightful article published on The Marshall Project, which was written by a female inmate Kimberly Hricko who is serving a life sentence at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup, Md., for first-degree murder and arson.

Hricko reports that what counts as prohibited items is decided by one person who has been nicknamed ‘Miss Beatrice’ by the inmates. The initial list of contraband makes sense for the most part. NO cash or checks. NO stickers or glitter. NO greeting cards. NO Polaroid pictures. NO magic marker or crayon. NO escape plans or bomb-making recipes, but from there it gets a little more obscure. A bible sent to Hricko had the ribbon bookmarks cut out and a photo of her daughter’s wedding was deemed contraband because there were alcoholic drinks shown in the picture.

We’re sure keeping prisons running is a difficult task, and no doubt there are many out there doing a good job, but we can’t help but feel this ‘Miss Beatrice’ might be a tad overzealous. Still, we’d love to see a prison-break movie where an inmate manages to escape using nothing but a map of Westeros.