Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

Director's Review Committee
Mark Stiles Unit
3060 FM 3514
Beaumont, TX 77705

January 12, 2015

RE: Censorship of Under Lock & Key to XXX

Dear DRC,
MIM Distributors received a letter dated November 24 from Mr. XXX notifying us that he did not receive one of the publications we mailed to him: Under Lock & Key 40 (September 2014). This publication was mailed to Mr XXXXXX on September 26.

Per your policy BP03.91 IVD: "The offender and the sender or addressee shall be provided a written statement of the disapproval and a statement of the reason for disapproval within three business days after receiving the correspondence. The notice shall be given on Correspondence Denial Forms. The offender shall be given a sufficiently detailed description of the rejected correspondence to permit effective use of the appeal procedures." In violation of this policy, we did not receive any notification of this mail rejection.

The U.S. Supreme Court has clearly stated that both the sender and the prisoner have a right, under the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, to receive notice and an opportunity to be heard when prison administrators or staff prevent the sender?s expressive materials from reaching their intended recipients (Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S.396. 94 S.Ct 1800, as reaffirmed on the point by Turner V. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987) and Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401 (1989) and Montcalm Publ'g Corp. v. Beck, 80 F.3d 105, 106 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 928 (1996)). In plain and striking contradiction with these principles, MIM Distributors was not notified of the censorship decision or actually of any decisions that the Mailroom staff has made with regard to the publications listed above.

In refusing to provide notice and an opportunity to be heard to the publisher (MIM Distributors), under local policies and/or practices, prison administrators and staff violated clearly established constitutional law and acted under color of state law for purposes of 42 U.S.C. ? 1983.

Per Texas DOC policy (BP-03.91 (rev.3)): "V. B. Any offender, other correspondent, or sender of a publication may appeal the rejection of any correspondence or publication. They may submit written evidence or arguments in support of their appeal. An offender or a correspondent may appeal the placement of the correspondent on the offender?s negative mailing list. An offender or a correspondent may appeal to the DRC for reconsideration of the negative mailing list placement after six months." Based on this we formally request an appeal of this censorship.

In your review of this censorship, please note that your own policy (BP-03.91 (rev.3)) states: "Publications shall not be rejected solely because the publication advocates the legitimate use of offender grievance procedures, urges offenders to contact public representatives about prison conditions, or contains criticism of prison authorities." In order to reject these publications for content, per your policy, you must demonstrate that the publication "contains material that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes, riots, or STG activity". Although these publications do include articles calling on prisoners for a day of solidarity activity, this is specifically focused on building peace between prisoners. The call is issued by the United Front for Peace in Prisons, and asks prisoners to work together for 24 hours to cease all violence and prisoner-on-prisoner hostility while fasting or engaging in other peaceful demonstrations of solidarity. This is not something that could be construed to cause the breakdown of the prison, in fact it should have the effect of decreasing prisoner-on-prisoner violence in the long run, presumably a goal of the prison itself.

With this letter MIM Distributors requests
- Notification of all future denials of our mail to any prisoners in Mark Stiles Unit
- Appeal of this specific instance of censorship
- and that future incoming mail from MIM Distributors to prisoners held at Mark Stiles Unit be handled in accordance with TDCJ policies and procedures, and federal and state law.


Sincerely,

MIM Distributors
PO Box 40799
San Francisco, CA 94140

CC: Affected parties