No Pornography of any Kind

The title is in response to my question to the prison refusing some magazines my family was nice enough to try to send me. The Mail Room Supervisor had some ready-loaded responses and thinly guised accusations that while I MAY not be a sex offender (it is always implied that everyone in the inmate population is guilty of all crimes, and just haven't been caught but for the handful we are convicted of), there are sex offenders and if they saw the nudity in the magazine.... What comes after that? No one has ever been able to explain what they "know" a prisoner does after they see nudity. Go insane? Fall into foetal position? Turn rape-crazy? I don't think they know and when I asked the Supervisor, she didn't voice an opinion, but looked tired.

This may not be obvious, but most prisons have gone "no-nude "and no one seems to know why. Staff and inmates alike seem to take it as part of the just punishment and the former go out of their way to take any pictures or depictions of nudity or "sexually suggestive poses". This includes magazines and publications that are on news-stands across the western world. I don't mean the kind that go behind the counter, I mean titles like National Geographic, Vogue or Rolling Stone. The magazines that were sent to me, they were artist magazines. i.e., International Artist. Mostly tutorials and new products, famous artists teaching their methods for technique and also the business side of art.

The response from the Mail Room Supervisor (the title of this post) wasn't about the magazines though. They were just the launching point. I'll transcribe the last bit of the conversation so that you may appreciate the type of people I deal with on a daily basis. Read my parts with confusion and exasperation and her parts with the BORED, tired tone of a customer service technician who isn't really listening and gets paid whether they do their job well or not.

Me: So even the magazines that are on regular news-stands..

Mail Room Supervisor: They will be rejected if there is any depictions of nudity or sexually suggestive poses.

Me: Even if its art?

Mail Room Supervisor: If there is any nudity, we won't let it in.

Me: So, if someone sent me a picture of the Michelangelo's "Last Judgement" or Botticelli's "Birth of Venus"...

Mail Room Supervisor: We don't allow pornography of any kind

So.... Wow...