Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

Lowell Clark, Director
Utah State Prison (USP)
PO Box 250
Draper, Utah 84020

26 October 2009

Director Lowell Clark,

We have received your October 14th letter stating that pre-sorted mail will be delivered to prisoners in Utah prisons as long as prisoners have notified the administration of their subscriptions. Thank you for clarifying this matter for us and for the staff in the mail room there. It may be a good idea to publicize this policy more generally so that other prisoners don?t have unnecessary problems joining mailing lists such as ours in the future.

As far as sending you a list of our subscribers, this would be against our confidentially policy for our readers. Instead I will cc individuals who have subscribed so that they may contact you themselves to obtain any information. If there are any problems obtaining this information, MIM Distributors will be happy to put anyone in contact with you at their request.

One question that remains, is that recent First Class mail was returned stating that prisoners in Intensive Management cannot receive magazines. If this is true, can you provide me with a copy the regulation that sets this standard. If not, then I am requesting that this censorship be stopped as well.

Thank you again for looking into this for us,

Lowell Clark, Division Director
Utah State Prison (USP)
P.O. Box 250
Draper, UT 84020

24 February 2010

Dear Director Clark,

This letter is regarding a Level 2 Response that Inmate Grievance Coordinator Billie Casper gave to XXX at Utah State Prison, reference #990873529. The response is regarding a grievance XXX filed asserting that there is a blanket censorship of the publication Under Lock & Key that has prevented XXX from receiving issues #4, 6, 8, 9 and 10.

In this Level 2 Response Coordinator Casper wrote that "Inmates housed in intensive management sections are only allowed First Class mail and privileged or religious mail," without providing a reference to any specific policy number. Coordinator Casper even went so far as to accuse XXX of filing his grievance maliciously and threatened to suspend Mr. XXXXXX from the grievance system if he did not withdraw his grievance about the blanket ban of Under Lock & Key.

As the publisher and distributor of the newsletter Under Lock & Key, we would like to refer you to some very relevant case law to this disagreement between MIM Distributors/XXX and Coordinator Casper/USP. In Prison Legal News v. Lehman 397 5.30 692 (9th Cir. 2005) it was determined that "Under the test laid out in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89-90 (1987), the [GA] DOC?s ban on non-subscription bulk mail and catalogs is not rationally related to a legitimate penological interest and is therefore unconstitutional." So although Coordinator Casper may be working within USP policy, USP policy is not congruent with United States law.

We are asking that you (1) review the Utah State Prison policy that asserts that IMU prisoners are not allowed to receive bulk mail, (2) work with the proper authorities to legally and properly update the USP policies, and (3) retrain USP mailroom and grievance staff to the new, legal policies. We also ask you to (4) lift the blanket censorship of Under Lock & Key, (5) and, if XXX was put on grievance suspension, to remove XXX from grievance suspension.


We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

MIM Distributors

CC: Affected parties.

Literature Review Committee
2601 Blair Stone Road
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2500

18 January 2010

Dear Sir or Madam,

In December, 2009 the mail room at Florida State Prison (FSP) began returning mail coming from MIM Distributors. This letter is to request a review of these decisions and to re-establish contact with prisoners at FSP.

Mailroom personnel P. Goodman has signed off on a number of ?Unauthorized Mail Return Receipts? for mail sent to Mr. XXX YYY. Two packages of reading material were returned for the reasons that an ?excess of 15 pages? was enclosed. As a known distributor, any publications sent from MIM Distributors should be processed as ?Admissible Reading Material? in accordance with Florida Administrative Code Chapter 33-501.401and not as ?Routine Mail.? ?Admissible Reading Material? does not have a page limit. Many small run publications are printed on plain white paper, but are clearly not letters due to their size and content.

In a third return receipt from P. Goodman they claim that the letter somehow promotes violence or disruption because ?it about gangs.? A portion of the letter discusses the Crips in a historical context. It does not discuss or promote acts of violence or the breaking of any laws or rules. The court?s decision in Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401 is clear that there must be a substantiated threat, and that censorship cannot be based on political or historical discussions.

Earlier in the same month, Issue 11 of the newsletter Under Lock & Key sent to a number of prisoners was impounded for review. This was done correctly applying Rule 33-501.401, yet on the notices none of the criteria set forth in Section (3) of the rule were specified to have been violated. The notice did list page numbers and descriptions of the content including, ?About Movements And gangs?, ?About (KKK)? and ?About Gangs?. Each description is factually correct, so the question is do these items violate any of the criteria laid out? As part of a prisoners? 1st Amendment rights protected under established case law, he may read, correspond with and participate in political organizations. Saying the word ?KKK? or ?gang? is not a threat to anyone.

I am requesting that 1) Under Lock & Key be released from impound and distributed to each subscriber, 2) that packages from MIM Distributors be handled as ?Admissible Reading Material? and not ?Routine Mail? and 3) that XXX YYY be allowed to read and study without harassment or undo restrictions. Please notify MIM Distributors at the address above of your decisions.

Sincerely,

Literature Review Committee
2601 Blair Stone Road
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2500

18 January 2010

Dear Sir or Madam,

In December, 2009 the mail room at Florida State Prison (FSP) began returning mail coming from MIM Distributors. This letter is to request a review of these decisions and to re-establish contact with prisoners at FSP.

Mailroom personnel P. Goodman has signed off on a number of ?Unauthorized Mail Return Receipts? for mail sent to Mr. XXX YYY. Two packages of reading material were returned for the reasons that an ?excess of 15 pages? was enclosed. As a known distributor, any publications sent from MIM Distributors should be processed as ?Admissible Reading Material? in accordance with Florida Administrative Code Chapter 33-501.401and not as ?Routine Mail.? ?Admissible Reading Material? does not have a page limit. Many small run publications are printed on plain white paper, but are clearly not letters due to their size and content.

In a third return receipt from P. Goodman they claim that the letter somehow promotes violence or disruption because ?it about gangs.? A portion of the letter discusses the Crips in a historical context. It does not discuss or promote acts of violence or the breaking of any laws or rules. The court?s decision in Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401 is clear that there must be a substantiated threat, and that censorship cannot be based on political or historical discussions.

Earlier in the same month, Issue 11 of the newsletter Under Lock & Key sent to a number of prisoners was impounded for review. This was done correctly applying Rule 33-501.401, yet on the notices none of the criteria set forth in Section (3) of the rule were specified to have been violated. The notice did list page numbers and descriptions of the content including, ?About Movements And gangs?, ?About (KKK)? and ?About Gangs?. Each description is factually correct, so the question is do these items violate any of the criteria laid out? As part of a prisoners? 1st Amendment rights protected under established case law, he may read, correspond with and participate in political organizations. Saying the word ?KKK? or ?gang? is not a threat to anyone.

I am requesting that 1) Under Lock & Key be released from impound and distributed to each subscriber, 2) that packages from MIM Distributors be handled as ?Admissible Reading Material? and not ?Routine Mail? and 3) that XXX YYY be allowed to read and study without harassment or undo restrictions. Please notify MIM Distributors at the address above of your decisions.

Sincerely,

Frank Ontko, Library Services
2601 Blair Stone Road
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2500

1 March 2010

Dear Mr. Ontko,

I received your response dated February 19, 2010 to my inquiries about literature that was censored at Florida State Prison (FSP). I do have some further questions on both issues.

First, you stated that "loose pages of material" are not considered publications. The literature sent was not loose (by my understanding of the word), but rather bound with multiple staples. Is it within your departments policy to define this as "loose pages"? If so, can you clarify how your department defines "loose" so that we can avoid any problems with this rule in the future?

Regarding the decision on my appeal of the censorship of Under Lock & Key Issue 11, it seems that the original reasons for censorship were abandoned for the reason you give in your recent letter that, it "advocates and encourages disruption of the institution and violation of department and institution rules." I will take that to mean that you agreed with me that the original reasons given were not legally substantive. However, I find this new reason even more baseless in that it does not even reflect the actual content of the publication.

If you intend to uphold the censorship of Under Lock & Key 11, can you please provide me with the rules that it promotes people to violate, and quotes and page numbers of where it does so?

We are keenly aware of the concerns of prison administrators, and the content of Under Lock & Key, caters to these concerns explicitly by arguing against breaking prison rules or the law, while promoting actions to defend the rights of people who are imprisoned. For your office to claim otherwise is hard to justify with any evidence.

Sincerely,

Brian Haws, Warden
44750 60th Street West
Lacaster, CA 93536-7620

24 February 2010

Dear Warden Haws,

This letter is regarding the censorship of a letter from MIM Distributors, San Francisco, California to Mr. XXX, who is a prisoner at California State Prison - Los Angeles County. Ironically, the content of the letter in question was a step-by-step guide to fighting censorship of mail, beginning with Step 1: File Grievances.

The letter was returned to MIM Distributors with "Unauthorized/Unacceptable Item" stamped on the envelope, but no further explanation as to why or what was unauthorized/unacceptable about the item. It is completely ridiculous and illegal that a letter that encourages prisoners to use legal means of fighting censorship should be disallowed as an "unauthorized/unacceptable item."

Therefore, this letter is to appeal that decision made by mailroom staff. We do not think that there are valid grounds on which to block the receipt of a letter that helps prisoners fight censorship by those held at CSP-LA County.

We request (1) an independent review the decision made by CSP-LA County mailroom staff to mark this letter as "unauthorized/unacceptable." We also ask for (2) a thorough explanation as to why this item was censored, with specific citations. Lastly, we ask that (3) mail be deliverable from MIM Distributors to all prisoners who choose to communicate with them AT CSP-LA County.

We appreciate your assistance and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

MIM Distributors

CC: Affected parties