MIM victory in Oregon but censorship continues

Most mail sent by MIM to prisoners at SRCI and TRCI prisons in Oregon (including MIM Notes, MIM Theory and regular letters) was being rejected by those prisons throughout the summer. Working with prisoners on the inside and supporters on the outside we sent numerous letters of protest to the mail administrators (some of which were rejected without being opened). After several months of returned mail and numerous protest letters we received the following:

Dear MIM:
This is in response to your letter dated Jun 3, 2002 regarding MIM publications that have been rejected from SRCI and TRCI. .... MIM has been authorized to send publications they publish. This was discussed at a monthly mail operations meeting. SRCI and TRCI incorrectly rejected MIM publications, as they correctly understood MIM was not an authorized distributor. Although MIM is not an authorized distributor, MIM is a publisher authorized to send materials they publish. This oversight has been corrected. We apologize for any inconvenience.

You have requested permission to send in new and used books to Oregon inmates. Our Mail Rule (Inmate) requires new books to be received directly from the publisher. We do permit suppliers and distributors who have been approved to send in publications, but these cannot be open to the public.

We have the above requirement to mitigate the possibility for the insertion of contraband in the publications. We will be unable to accommodate your request to send in new or used publications that you do not publish...

Sincerely,

Jacy Duran, Central Mail Administrator
Oregon DOC
2575 Center Street NE
Salem OR 97310-4667

MIM responds: Forcing the prisons to MIM Distributors has a 15 year history of running a Books for Prisoners program in prisons across the country, including throughout the Oregon DOC, without a single incident of contraband insertion into a publication. In fact, we have a long track record of helping prisoners to educate themselves and reduce violence and confrontation between prisoners. MIM's Books for Prisoners program is one of only a few in the country and we provide an invaluable service of political education to prisoners in Oregon and throughout the country. We also requested a list of approved distributors so that we might use this to further our argument for allowing MIM onto the list. We ask our readers (both inside and outside the Oregon DOC) to write letters to Jacy Duran at the address above, requesting that MIM be added as an approved distributor.

Censorship in Oregon continues
This is just a quick note to let you people know I've been denied my April 15th issue of MIM Notes. Your news doesn't seem to go over too well with the gal down in our mailroom here at SRCI. As a matter of fact, the staff here at the prison are real negative about handing out my MIM Notes to me.

Now the inmates here are a whole different story. I pass my MIM Notes off to at least 40 different people to read when I finished with them. Your news is uplifting to all my close friends, and their friends also. Anyway, I thought I'd send you people a copy of one of my mail violations that shows what's going on around here. This is how these people confiscate our mail. They call it a mail violation. "A rule violation."


 [About]  [Contact]  [Home]  [News]  [RAIL]  [Agitation Home]