Illinois Court Rules Medical Books Not Allowed to Prisoners
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has just rejected an Illinois
prisoner’s lawsuit pertaining to the refusal of the prison to allow him
to receive the Physician’s Desk Reference and the Complete
Guide to Prescription Drugs 2009. The court’s rationale for this
rejection was rather convoluted:
“Quite simply, the prison gave the books’ drug related content as one of the reasons justifying its decision to restrict Muson’s access to the books, and we don’t need to look beyond the books’ title and the content to know the books contain information about drugs.”
By reading this statement, one would assume that the prison was afraid of the information that the prisoner would learn from reading these books, but later in the opinion, the Court indicated that the same books were available to be read in the prison’s law library.
The Seventh Circuit has been issuing some rather head-scratching decisions lately concerning prisoners’ rights, and this is simply another one. If the prison we are confined in does not have these books available in the prison library this is a point we as prisoners can raise around this case.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This court ruling demonstrates the arbitrary and unjust basis for censorship of prisoners’ mail and reading material. The difficulty with fighting these decisions, which start with the mail room rejections, is that courts often uphold censorship with arbitrary and contradictory reasoning. We need the help of jailhouse lawyers and street lawyers alike so that we can take on some of these battles and expand prisoners’ access to revolutionary literature in particular.
