Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

13 October 2014

RE: censorship of Under Lock & Key No. 39 (July/August 2014)

Dear Assistant Director,

This letter is in response to a 3 October 2014 letter from Fay Lassiter, Chair, Publication Review Committee regarding the publication titled Under Lock & Key No. 39 (July/August 2014). We received this letter on 8 October 2014.

The letter states that the publication was disapproved for delivery to prisoners in North Carolina because it allegedly violates North Carolina Division of Prisons policy D.0100. The only reason indicated on page 1 of the form was '?D? Code Violation.' As we have repeatedly pointed out, this vague reasoning makes it hard for MIM Distributors to address your department's concerns.

Additionally, in your Policy & Procedures D.0100 Publications Received/Posessed by Inmates, at .0103 (b), it states ?Descriptions and justifications should be specific enough to enable the Publication Review Committee (if there is an appeal) to turn to each listed page and immediately identify which words or images were disapproved and why.? I know this Procedure relates to the notes the Warden makes when referring the publication to the Publication Review Committee. Yet, page 2 and 3 of the Letter to Publisher form, where the page numbers and comments indicating what is objectionable, are consistently left blank. We are requesting that in the future that the Chairperson complete the standard paperwork according to your department's policies to facilitate our communications.

The repeated censorship of whole publications without the information we are requesting does not sufficiently articulate the reasoning for banning publications in order to satisfy the threshold of adequate motivation established by the U.S. Supreme Court. Federal Courts have stated in several occasions that "Prison authorities cannot rely on general or conclusory assertions to support their policies." Walker v. Sumner (9th Cir. 1990) 917 F.2d 382, 385 and that "Unsupported security claims couldn't justify infringement on First Amendment rights." Crofton v. Roe (9th Cir. 1999) 170 F.3d 957

At this time we can only appeal based on our knowledge of the whole content of that publication, that it does not advocate ?violence, disorder, insurrection or terrorist/gang activities.?
We did receive your letter from 8 September 2014 upholding the censorship of issue #38 of Under Lock & Key. In that letter you specified the content that you used to justify that censorship as we are requesting here, however this was received over three months after we first received notice from a prisoner that your department was holding that publication and after you had closed any opportunities to redress the censorship of MIM Distributors mail.

We would appreciate assistance in this matter and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,