Some US prisons are banning books on coding

It's proven that access to education and skills development significantly reduce prisoner recidivism, which means less prisoners to house in private prisons. The private prison industry has been lobbying at the state and federal levels for years to create new laws to increase the U.S. prison population (the highest in the world) and eliminate programs that reduce recidivism. This isn't "laughably ignorant", this is intentional and by design.