Because that’s the way to teach them to respect the system

Inmate wins writing award, prison shuts down writing program and erases all the files.

Prison officials destroyed computer files containing inmates’ personal writing days after a prisoner won a national writing award, best-selling author Wally Lamb said. Lamb, who teaches a creative writing workshop at the York Correctional Facility in East Lyme, said Wednesday that 15 women inmates lost up to five years of work when officials at the prison’s school ordered all hard drives used for the class erased and its computer disks turned over.
[…] Department of Correction Commissioner Theresa Lantz halted the writing program March 29 after learning that inmate Barbara Parsons Lane had won a $25,000 PEN American Center prize for her work on the 2003 book “Couldn’t Keep It To Myself: Testimonies from our Imprisoned Sisters.

The prisons commissioner says it was all due to a “miscommunication,” and the program will be started back up, and they’re “looking into” how the discs got erased. And the story is rather terse. But on the face of it, it sounds like a stupid, knee-jerk reaction to some prisoners “making good.”

I don’t agree that it’s a First Amendment thing (it’s prison computers and a prison program, so they can basically do what they want with it), but it sounds pretty ill-advised to me.

More about the Lamb, the program, and the prize here.

(via BoingBoing)

UPDATE: But wait, there’s more …

Eight inmates who contributed to an award-winning book from behind bars have agreed to pay the state a portion of their royalties to help offset the cost of their incarceration, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced Monday. Under the settlement, each woman will pay the state $500.
The women participated in a writing course taught by best-selling author Wally Lamb at York Correctional Institution. Their work became the basis for the 2003 publication “Couldn’t Keep It To Myself: Testimonies from our Imprisoned Sisters.”
The Department of Correction temporarily halted the writing program earlier this month after questions arose over whether inmates should be allowed to profit from their work. One inmate, Barbara Parsons Lane, won $25,000 prize from the PEN American Center for work that was featured in the book.
The state went to court last year in an attempt to seize the book’s royalties at a rate of $117 a day under a state law that permits the state to recover incarceration costs from inmates.

Now that seems a much more reasonable concern.

Much more detail here, here, and here.

From that info, it sounds like the program shutdown and computer wiping (still ill-advised) came about when prison officials were “surprised” to discover that the writings had been put in for a prize, and that the prize had been won. Visions of the “Son of Sam” controversy probably led to hasty judgment, and it looks like that’s now being reversed by the Dept of Corrections.

Now the question is … do they have backups of those computers …