Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

Warden J.E. Thomas
U.S. Lewisberg
2400 Robert F. Miller Dr
Lewisberg, PA 17837

Jul 29, 2014

Re: Censorship of XXX mail; and special mail regulations via 28 CFR 540-20(a); 28 CFR 540.70(4)(b)

Warden Thomas,

Our organization publishes a newsletter known as Under Lock & Key (ULK). We publish news on various topics concerning the treatment of prisoners and politics. It has come to our attention that our mail to Mr. XXX is being censored: it is not being provided to him based purely on the political "content of the material" though it poses no threat to the safety or security to your facility.

28CFR 540.70(4)(b) states in relevant part:

"The warden may reject a publication only if it is determined detrimental to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution or if it might facilitate criminal activity. The warden may not reject a publication solely because its content is religious, philosophical, political, social or sexual, or because its content is unpopular or repugnant?"

Below is a list of the mail we sent to Mr. XXX over the past year and a half which was censored:

Under Lock & Key 36 mailed 3/25/2014
MIM Theory 9 mailed 3/25/2014
MIM Theory 5 mailed 3/25/2014
MIM Theory 7 mailed 3/25/2014
Black Panther Party Newspaper Collection mailed 3/25/2014
Teoria del MIM 1 mailed 3/25/2014
Que es el MIM? mailed 3/25/2014
Under Lock & Key 34 mailed 9/27/2013
Under Lock & Key 33 mailed 7/30/2013
Under Lock & Key 32 mailed 5/28/2013
Under Lock & Key 31 mailed 3/26/2013
Censorship guide mailed 2/27/2013
MIM Theory 1 mailed 2/18/2013

We request to receive notice and specific reasoning (if any) for the censorship or nondelivery of any of our mail or publications sent to Mr. XXX pursuant to BOP policy. We request that Mr. XXX be notified as well (see 28 CFR 540.13). This notification will enable us to appeal and pursue litigation.

In the case of the recent 3/25/2014 set of mail, we were notified that the "material enclosed contains gang information, discussing restructuring of the Black Panthers." We request more information about this rejection and detail about what specifically in these publications involved "gang information." We do not agree that there is any such information in those publications. Some of them include historical information about the Black Panther Party, but this is political and historical material that is not detrimental to the prison so we can only conclude it was rejected in violation of 28 CFR 540.70.

Moreover, we are requesting that our correspondence with Mr. XXX be treated and processed as "special mail" which mandates that said mail be signed for by Mr. XXX and logged into a special mail log book, see 28 CFR 540.20(a): "An inmate may write through "special mail" to representatives of the news media specified by name or title (see, 540.2(b))."

We make this formal request after repeated nondelivery of mail, newsletters and other documents sent to Mr. XXX. Because of this censorship we make this formal complaint in hopes you will address this problem decisively and expeditiously so that no other action is necessary.

To summarize we request:
- A review of the censorship of the 3/25/2014 mail sent to Mr. XXX
- To be provided with details on the nature of the material that was found to violate prison policy and merit censorship
- Notification of censorship of all future mail be provided to both MIM(Prisons) and Mr. XXX in a timely manner
- Processing as "special mail" our correspondence with Mr. XXX in the future.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this most important matter.

Respectfully,

MIM(Prisons)
PO Box 40799
San Francisco, CA 94140