Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

Cynthia Bostic, Assistant Director
Support Services
4260 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4260

19 November 2012

To Ms. Bostic,

This letter is in response to a "Letter To Publisher" from Fay Lassiter dated October 30, 2012. In a previous communication you state that it is overly burdensome to review censorship decisions more than fifteen days after the notice. Trust me, this is quite burdensome for us as well, and we do not have a paid full time staff to address these issues as your agency does. So I apologize for the delayed response, and will respond as soon as I am able in the future. But as you can see by checking the USPS Certified Mail tag on the letter, our mail retriever did not receive this letter until last week. I was holding the enclosed letter dated 12 November 2012 until I was able to get ahold of the most recent letter as I wanted my letter to be relevant to the most recent information.

All that said, such time restraints from your office do not preclude you from following the law in handling the mail between outside parties and the prisoners being held by your agency. I am requesting an independent review of the enclosed decision to censor Under Lock & Key No. 28. Once again there is no "Reason for Disapproval" listed on page 2 of the notice. Page 1 cites pages 2 and 13. Page 2 is merely a description of what Under Lock &Key and MIM(Prisons) are that is printed in each issue of the newsletter. This statement reads in part, "We encourage prisoners to join these battles while explicitly discouraging them from engaging in any violence or illegal acts." So I do not understand how this statement violates your mail rules.

Ms. Lassiter seems to have an issue with page 13 because it criticizes decisions she made regarding the censorship of previous issues of Under Lock & Key. We are very familiar with Ms. Lassiter's personal opinions on Under Lock & Key and whether or not prisoners should read it. But we hope that you will agree with us that she does not have the discretion to decide what prisoners in North Carolina are allowed to ready, only to apply the "legitimate penological interests" standard. Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, clearly asserted that you cannot censor things you find politically repugnant. Furthermore, Johnson v. Raemisch, 557 F.Supp.2d 964 (2008) directly addressed the issue of state agencies censoring materials that are critical of their agency claiming it was a "security threat." The courts are clear that this type of behavior is against federal laws.

On this same subject I have recently been notified by prisoners in Marion that a petition addressed to James French is being censored there because "MIM Distributors is on the disapproved publication list." I know you know this is not legal as we have had long discussions with you about the disapproved publication list in North Carolina, and how it cannot be used to censor any mail from an organization or company. You should also be aware that prisoners have a right to "petition the government for a redress of grievance," which was the purpose of the petition.

Please let me know whether or not you agree with my interpretation of the law described above and whether you will allow prisoners in North Carolina to receive Under Lock & Key No. 28.


Thank you,

My name is xxxx. I sent you a letter about a book I got in the mail but could not have. I tried to send this book home but you said "Funds Not Available." On 10-10-12 you sent me an answer to this letter stating "your publication was destroyed per policy." As I said in my first letter, you said it is $2.90 to send the book home. I am indigent. I get 10 indigent stamps a month. 7 indigent stamps would have covered the mailing of this book. So why was it destroyed?

You just told the inmate in ABCDEFG (who also got something in the mail you would not let him get) that he could have used his 10 indigent stamps to sent it out but tit would not cover the mailing. So why was my book destroyed when I have the stamps to cover it? And policy says if we (indigent inmates) don't have the money you are supposed to take the money from the indigent inmate trust fund. So I need to know who destroyed my book? I need their full name because I will be filing a lawsuit.

You must have funds available in your account for trust fund officer to draw and mailroom to place on outgoing mail.


mail room 10-12-12