Atheist Reveals Why She Always Had a Bible in Prison

A former inmate has shared why she always kept a Bible in prison, despite calling herself an atheist.

Keri Blakinger was arrested in 2010 and served 21 months for a drug charge. She had struggled with addiction for several years before police caught her with a Tupperware of heroin during her senior year at Cornell University, as she describes in a new memoir. Blakinger told Newsweek that she started her time in the Tompkins County Jail before being transferred to the New York prison system.

Today, the convicted felon-turned reporter shares stories from her life in prison with thousands of viewers online. A TikTok video she shared on May 24 has amassed 310,000 views.

"So, I am an atheist," Blakinger said in the clip. "But when I was in jail and prison, I always had a Bible with me. And I know that seems weird, but here's why."

She explained, "We all knew that when you got transferred from jail to prison, the only thing that you could bring with you was a religious book. And the only religious book we had around that jail was Bibles."

"This is my jail Bible," she added, holding the worn book up to the camera.

"And the reason I needed it was to write down addresses," Blakinger went on. "You couldn't bring any addresses with you from jail to prison and sometimes not from one jail to the other, so we all knew to write the addresses that were important to us in the margins."

She showed her audience a page from the "jail Bible" with words scribbled in between blocks of scripture.

"I have a whole bunch of pages where I have them hidden on the inner margins and stuff because if you couldn't memorize every single phone number and address you needed, this was the only way to take it with you."

Blakinger told Newsweek that she recorded addresses for dozens of people who she kept in touch with while incarcerated.

"My favorite teacher from high school who'd been a mentor, my brother, my friends, a couple concerned and caring professors from college, some people who'd visited the jail with various 12-step programs, and other women I'd met in jail who got out before me," she said.

'The Nation's Largest Book Ban': Prison Systems

The United States locks up more people per capita than any other country, with nearly 2 million people incarcerated in 2022, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Although book censorship rules vary across states and prison systems, a 2019 report from nonprofit PEN America, which advocates for free expression, determined that book restrictions in prisons constitute "the nation's largest book ban."

The report found that restrictions were "often arbitrary, overbroad, opaque, subject to little meaningful review, and overly dismissive of incarcerated people's right to access literature behind bars."

In Kansas, more than 7,000 books were banned from state prisons in 2019, including Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones and Angela Davis's Are Prisons Obsolete?

In West Virginia, a 2019 contract stated that inmates would be charged 3 cents a minute to read e-books—a "discount rate"—despite the fact that all available books came from Project Gutenberg, a free online library. Meanwhile, state prisoners earned less than $1 an hour.

New York state also restricted inmate reading to what critics described as "junk sex novels," Bibles or religious books, and activity books for coloring and puzzles in a 2018 program.

TikToker Takeaways: 'So Cruel'

On TikTok, Blakinger's viewers said they were both moved by her ingenuity and disturbed by the cruelty of prison systems.

"Wow, that is so cruel," commented one person. "It seems like cutting people off from their support system is the absolute worst thing you could do."

"Ms. Blakinger, [thanks] for sharing your story, really inspiring," said another.

Some commenters who claimed experience with prisons said Blakinger's story was familiar to them.

"Omg, I found my Bible in storage the other day!" wrote another former inmate. "I did so many messages/calls for people when I got out."

"I'm a corrections officer and I've seen people do this," said another comment.