Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

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

1 September 2012

To Ms. Bostic,

This letter is to request an independent review of two decisions to censor mail sent by MIM Distributors to unnamed prisoners held by the state of North Carolina. One was dated August 23, 2012 and was in regards to Under Lock Key No. 27 (July/August 2012). The second was dated August 24, 2012 and was in regards to an unspecified issue of Under Lock & Key. Though you do not indicate what issue it is, the notice lists pages 1 & 3 as promoting the commission of criminal activities. I can state with certainty that no issue of Under Lock & Key promotes breaking the law and this policy is specified on page 2 of every issue as well.

In light of the incomplete information found in this form I am once again requesting that Fay Lassiter complete the fields in the future to indicate the publication name and issue/date, as well as to indicate pages that violate the rules and the specific reason for disapproval in each case. Please provide this information to me in your response regarding these appeals.


Sincerely,

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

1 September 2012

To Ms. Bostic,

This letter is to request an independent review of two decisions to censor mail sent by MIM Distributors to unnamed prisoners held by the state of North Carolina. One was dated August 23, 2012 and was in regards to Under Lock Key No. 27 (July/August 2012). The second was dated August 24, 2012 and was in regards to an unspecified issue of Under Lock & Key. Though you do not indicate what issue it is, the notice lists pages 1 & 3 as promoting the commission of criminal activities. I can state with certainty that no issue of Under Lock & Key promotes breaking the law and this policy is specified on page 2 of every issue as well.

In light of the incomplete information found in this form I am once again requesting that Fay Lassiter complete the fields in the future to indicate the publication name and issue/date, as well as to indicate pages that violate the rules and the specific reason for disapproval in each case. Please provide this information to me in your response regarding these appeals.


Sincerely,

Cynthia Bostic, Assistant Director
Support Services
4274 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4274

21 August 2012

To Ms. Bostic,

This letter is in regards to mail sent to Mr. AAAA XXXX at Marion Correctional Institution, including a letter sent by myself on July 30, 2012. The mail was marked legal mail and certified. It included the letter I sent to you on the same date, which you should have received, as well as some documents of censorship and appeals of the censorship of our mail to Mr. XXXX. The United States Post Office lists this mail as being certified delivered to the addressee. Yet Mr. XXXX informs us that this mail was opened and read by state employees F. Hamilton and Ofc. Curtis counter to the procedures listed in D.0307(f)(1)(A). After reading this mail in front of him, staff took it with them for about 7 hours before returning it to Mr. XXXX. This is a blatant violation of the handling of certified legal mail, and I am requesting that your office investigate these staff members actions and ensure that they do not happen in the future.

It seems that most mail that MIM Distributors sends into Marion CI is being censored. Many items MIM has not received any notification for, nor have the recipients. This inappropriate handling of legal mail seems to be part of this systematic approach to any mail from MIM Distributors address, regardless of content. This reinforces suspicions related to previous censorship where you are unable to provide any substantiating evidence to back up claims that mail from MIM Distributors somehow poses a threat to safety of people living and working in North Carolina prisons. I am requesting that notifications be issued to the addressee and the sender when mail is censored, and that these notifications explain specifically what was objectionable and why.

As I mentioned in my last letter, I don't think we can consider it notification of censorship if you do not complete the forms that you send to MIM Distributors. Previous forms listed no reason for censorship or page numbers that violated rules. A recent notice given to Mr. XXXX does not list the publication name/volume/issue # as instructed, and the page number listed on page 2 of the form is "A." Judging by the date this form was addressing issue 27 of Under Lock & Key, but there is no page "A" in that publication. No notification of this incident has been received by MIM Distributors. So I am requesting that you send us a completed form when you do notify us of this censorship so that we can address your concerns.

In summary I am making the following requests:

1) ensure that your staff follow legal procedures in handling mail from MIM Distributors;
2) ensure that you and your staff fill out forms completely to provide proper notification of censorship;
3) specifically, provide a complete notice of censorship of mail received on 7/31/2012 at Marion CI.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Bostic, Assistant Director
Support Services
4274 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4274

30 July 2012

To Ms. Bostic,

We received a letter to publisher from Fay Lassiter notifying MIM Distributors that Under Lock & Key No. 21 has been disapproved for prisoners in North Carolina. The form indicates the reason as "H", but there is no reason for disapproval on the subsequent page where Reason .0109 H is listed. Last week I just responded to another letter where that was also the case, which makes it hard for us to address your concerns when we don't know what is objectionable nor why. Thankfully, Mr. XXXXXX notified us that the reason for the censorship was given to him as an article on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. As he stated in his appeal, the same content was available to him via numerous other news sources, so it seems to be discriminatory that MIM Distributors is being censored for covering this story.

In light of these facts, I would like to request that an independent review of Under Lock & Key No. 21 be done, and that the results be sent to me at the address below. I am also requesting that future notices of disapproval include a justification for the disapproval so that we can both try to address the problem in the future as well as ensure that this censorship is not occurring arbitrarily or discriminatorily, as it might appear.


Sincerely,