Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

Department of Corrections
ATTN: Library Service Administrator
501 S Calhoun St
Tallahassee, FL 32399-2500

June 20, 2015

RE: Rejection of Under Lock & Key 40 at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution

Dear Ms. Morrison,

This letter is in response to notifications received by Mr. XXX at Santa Rosa CI regarding the rejection of Under Lock & Key No. 40 The purpose of this letter is to appeal this decisions and have the newsletter delivered to Mr. XXXXXX. This is an interesting and troubling rejection because:

1. Last year a copy this same magazine was returned to us by the mailroom Dade CI and after we sent a letter of appeal the literature review committee responded that this issue of ULK was not impounded or denied. It appeared that this was just a mistake by the mailroom with no justification. As a result we assume that ULK40 is not in fact prohibited.
2. The reason given for rejection ULK40 is as follows:

"Is rejected for reasons not related to subject matter. (Specify):
The publication is rejected due to reasons other than criteria and over limit. This publication was removed from the publication list via an inmate request to the mailroom."

We are unable to construct an appeal to this rejection without any reasons for rejection beyond the “Not related to subject matter”. If the reason is not for subject matter we can not imagine what other possible reason there could be. We also question the “inmate request to mailroom” claim and request some evidence for this justification since the prisoner in question actually sent us a copy of the rejection and clearly does not want his mail rejected.

Further, this rejection was not sent to MIM(Distributors), and in fact the “date mailed to sender” form on the back is left blank. As you know from previous correspondence, we have an ongoing problem with Florida prisons failing to notify us of denial of our publications. I am once again requesting that the FDOC follow its own policies and respect the publisher's rights to Due Process under the Fourteenth Amendment (see Montcalm Publ'g Corp. v. Beck, 80 F.3d 105, 106 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 928 (1996)).

I am requesting that you allow Mr. XXX to receive issues 40 of Under Lock & Key. He has more recently moved to Apalachee Correctional Institution so you can have the mailroom at Santa Rosa CI forward his publication to this new address.


Sincerely,