Censorship in U.S. Prisons

Mission: Amerikan Censorship Documentation Project

We are pleased to announce a new documentation project devoted to keeping track of censorship by the Amerikan injustice system. Founded in 2004, the Documentation Project began making its data available online in the fall of 2007. We hope this will make it more convenient and desireable for people to contribute to the project.

The United $tates imprisons more people per-capita than any other country in the world, a majority of whom are non-violent offenders. At the same time, the U.$. does more to arm and train fascists in the Third World than any other country. But still this is the country so many patriotic Amerikans praise as the home of freedom. There are a number of organizations in this country that focus on documenting repression by governments around the world. But they conveniently ignore the role of the Amerikan government in aiding and even encouraging that repression while also turning a blind eye to repression within U.$. borders. Most importantly, they do not prioritize exposing U.$. imperialism as the primary source of repression worldwide. The censorship documentation project focuses on one piece of this U.$. government-led repression: censorship in the so-called justice system.

The censorship documentation project produces regular reports of censorship in Amerikan prisons. It provides much needed perspective to the regular reports on repression and censorship elsewhere in the world, produced by organizations that generally ignore the abuses perpetuated by the Amerikan government.

MIM(Prisons) documents the censorship we face and the battles we are waging against it on our website. Our Serve the People Free Political Literature to Prisoners program faces extensive repression by the imperialists.

With your help we can expand these reports and coordinate our battles. We can join forces in the fight against censorship by sharing information and protesting together. And when one of us wins a censorship battle, we can share that victory with others and make sure it is enforced for everyone.

We are asking you to report information about documented censorship you experience in Amerikan prisons.

Available Data:

This project documents censorship in prisons across the U.$. There are two basic sets of information that we track and make available to the public. The first is Rules and Regulations, searchable by state or by institution. If you are interested in the official rules of a state or you want to now if you can send certain material thru a facility this is a good place to check first. The second set of data is a list of individual Incidents of Censorship. This may provide a more thorough view of censorship in terms of what is really happening in the mail room, and not just what they say is happening. This may also be of interest to those involved in legal battles and in need of citations of incidents to corroborate their case.

Data Completeness:

This data is not complete. It is compiled on a voluntary basis and is therefore far from a comprehensive account of censorship in U.$. prisons. Rather it is a sample of the censorship that is going on. MIM(Prisons) began putting its own data into this system in the summer of 2007. Therefore, any data before then will be sparse (contact us to help get our old censorship data into this system). Any data after that should be an almost complete account of censorship that we face as an organization from prisons. Anyone who sends mail to U.$. prisons is welcome to contribute to and use this service. As participation grows, the thoroughness and therefore usefulness of this informaiton will increase.