Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

The reason Under Lock and Key has been rejected is: "The publication contains information on inmates and petitioning to support inmate food strikes and has been determined detrimental to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution."

I noticed that the rejection notice they are sending you gave you 20 days from receipt to appeal, but that the cheaters dated the rejection letter which was given to me today, 10 April 2015, talking four days off the clock for me. Not much time for me to reply.

U.S. Bureau of Prisons
North Central Regional Office
400 State Street
Tower II, 8th Floor
Kansas City, KS 66101

2 April 2010

Dear Regional Director,

This letter is regarding blanket censorship of mail from MIM Distributors to prisoners held at U.S. Penitentiary Marion for the past year. The publication in question is titled Under Lock & Key. It is a newsletter that contains articles that are written by prisoners. No identifying information, such as names of ID#s, is disclosed in the newsletter.

On 22 April 2009, ULK issue 7 (March 2009) was censored because it contains inmate-to-inmate information. However, considering prisoners are allowed to write for the press, and prisoners are allowed to read the press, it would be illegal to claim that ULK falls under this category of being inmate-to-inmate correspondence, unless you are also censoring newspapers that have any authors who are currently in prison. This same illegitimate reason was given to censor issue 9 (July 2009) and issue 10 (September 2009). Issue 8 was not sent into Marion prison, which is probably why it wasn't censored.

Issue 11 ( November 2009) was censored because pages 6, 7, 10, and 11 "contains correspondence which encourages actions which may be disruptive to the orderly operation of the institution." On page 7 of issue 11, in a box titled "What is MIM(Prisons)?" is written "MIM(Prisons) struggles to end the oppression of all groups over other groups. We encourage prisoners to join these battles while explicitly discouraging them from engaging in any violence or illegal acts. MIM(Prisons) and its publications explicitly oppose the use of armed struggle at this time..." and the rest of the publication stays true to that principle.

This letter is to appeal that decision made by mailroom staff at USP Marion. We do not think that there are valid grounds on which to make the claim that Under Lock & Key should be completely banned at that institution. We would also like to ask that further correspondence between MIM Distributors and any prisoners at USP Marion go on without harassment or illegal censorship in the future.

We appreciate your assistance and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

MIM Distributors

CC: Affected parties