Running a jail the size of Dallas County’s is no easy task. The lockup is responsible for the safety of close to 7,000 inmates plus that of more than 1,000 staffers.

Courts have recognized the challenges faced by prisons and jails and have given their administrators some discretion to limit inmates’ rights for safety reasons.

Even with those caveats, we struggle to understand the impasse between the office of Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown and the publisher of a prisoner rights’ magazine. As our newsroom colleague Tracey McManus reported, Prison Legal News is complaining to a court that the county jail has blocked the magazine and other mail it sends inmates, in violation of a 2007 consent decree that said its materials are permitted mail.

The jail has tablets for reading, but what Prison Legal News describes in a court filing is essentially a ban on all physical print materials. Magazine editor Paul Wright said jail officials offered to scan the magazine but declined to allow soft-cover books. Surely the Dallas County jail can find a way to give inmates access to paperbacks in a safe way.

Human Rights Defense Center, the publisher of Prison Legal News, said its materials were returned with a stamp saying they were no longer accepted. The inmate handbook was updated in 2022 to limit deliveries of physical publications only to people housed in areas without access to tablets, but most of the jail has tablets except for the medical and restricted units.

In 2022, this editorial page reported that about 500 doors in the jail’s North Tower had been made inoperable by inmates who had jammed them with items including books. Inmates had grown so bold that they were messing with the doors in front of state inspectors.

In an interview at the time, Brown told us her staff had stepped up monitoring, cell checks and discipline for poorly behaved inmates. She also mentioned that inmates were given access to tablets to read mail and books.

The Dallas County jail passed its latest state inspection in January with flying colors, with no matters for corrective action, according to a news release from the Sheriff’s Department.

We credit the jail for making improvements, but we’re still puzzled by the ban on physical books and periodicals. A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Department told us in an email that the jail has a library where inmates may access materials from Prison Legal News, but Wright told us that a conversation with the county turned hostile when he pressed for details about the library.

The Sheriff’s Department declined further comment citing the litigation.

The Dallas County jail is bound by legal agreement to allow inmates to receive Prison Legal News materials. We don’t understand why it didn’t seek a court’s permission to amend that agreement if there was an urgent safety concern about paper copies.

If most other lockups, including federal maximum-security prisons, can find ways to let inmates access physical publications from approved vendors, so can our jail. We can think of worse things for an inmate to do than leaf through a magazine.