Eric Dexheimer has a piece worth reading in the Austin American-Statesman (found via Books, Inq.) about the process of banning certain books and periodicals in Texas prisons:

In the past five years, volumes on massage, home health care, circumcision, vintage aircraft nose art, gardening, Dungeons & Dragons and a pictorial history of restaurant menus were rejected for displaying too much explicit material.

Inmates enrolled in sex offender treatment programs, often for pedophilia, cannot receive any reading material except newspapers, religious material, and legal or educational publications. But a ban on images of nude children applies to everyone, Smith said. [. . .]

Art has proved especially tricky to regulate. Shelby said she tries to educate mailroom workers to keep their hands off books of paintings featuring naked adults. Yet many great works also display naked children, and books featuring the work of some of the world’s best-known artists, including Caravaggio and Rembrandt, have been blocked. [. . .]

In an effort to separate art from child porn, reviewers have come up with a test, Shelby said: If a naked child has clearly visible wings, it is a legitimate cherub and the book can stay. No wings? It must go.

“If he is naked, the Baby Jesus would be denied,” she said.