Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

Assistant Director of Support Services
North Carolina Department of Corrections
Division of Prisons
4260 MSC
Raleigh, NC, 27699-4260

March 13, 2012

RE: Censorship incident occurred at Johnston Correctional Institution ? exclusion of publications sent to prisoner XXX from MIM Distributors.

I am writing this letter about a censorship incident that recently occurred at Johnston Correctional Institution in Smithfield, North Carolina.

MIM Distributors sent the above mentioned prisoner two different issue of a publication titled Under Lock & Key. Precisely MIM Distributors sent Mr. XXX:
➢ Under Lock & Key, issue 22 on 09/21/2011
➢ Under Lock & Key, issue 23 on 11/18/2011

We recently learned from the prisoner (Mr. XXX) that he never received any of the publications listed above. This letter is to inform you that MIM Distributors didn?t receive any notice of censorship determination about these two publications.

Your Division of Prisons Policy D.0100 states at sections D.0103 and D.0107 that respectively prisoners and publishers have to be notified of negative determinations and entitles both the sender and the recipient to appeal rejections of publications.

The same Policy obligates your mailroom staff to come to a determination within 7 days from the arrival of the publication.

Both the sender and the prisoner have a right, under the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, to receive notice and an opportunity to be heard when prison administrators or staff prevent the sender?s expressive materials from reaching their intended recipients (Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S.396. 94 S.Ct 1800, as reaffirmed on the point by Turner V. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987) and Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401 (1989) and Montcalm Publ'g Corp. v. Beck, 80 F.3d 105, 106 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 928 (1996)). In plain and striking contradiction with these principles, neither Mr. McCrae, nor MIM Distributors were notified of the censorship decision.

In refusing to provide notice and an opportunity to be heard to both the prisoner (Mr. McCrae) and the publisher (MIM Distributors), under local policies and/or practices, prison administrators and staff violated clearly established constitutional law and acted under color of state law for purposes of 42 U.S.C. ? 1983.

With the present letter, MIM Distributors requests

➢ to know whether or not a determination has been made over the mentioned publications;
➢ in case of a negative determination, to be notified of the reasons of the censorship decision and to be offered a chance to appeal the exclusion of its materials.

We also request that adequate notice be provided to the prisoner.

We appreciate your assistance in this matter and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

MIM Distributors
P.O. Box 40799
San Francisco, CA 94140

CC: Affected parties

Joseph B. Hall, Administrator
Johnston Correctional Institution
2465 US 70 West
Smithfield NC 27577

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

June 5, 2012

RE: Your April 12, 2012 letter regarding denial of Under Lock & Key No. 22 (September/October 2011) and No. 23 (November/December 2011)to Mr. XXX

Dear Ms. Bostic,

Thank you for your response to my letter concerning the above-mentioned issue. In your letter from April 12, 2012, you stated that a review was conducted of Under Lock & Key No. 22 and No. 23 even though our appeal deadline had expired. We appreciate that you conducted another review. Nonetheless, we are disappointed that you came to the same determination to censor these publication.

With this letter we would like to request statistics or further information on the frequency of the Publication Review Committee (PRC) to uphold or overturn the initial censorship decision made by prison mailroom staff. The reasons offered by the PRC to allow censorship are so superficial, it is impossible to tell whether a review was conducted at all. In your most recent letter you simply stated "we conducted a review. Resultantly, the Publication Review Committee's disapproval of these two publications is upheld..." Really? What did the review entail?

We appreciate your assistance in this matter and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

MIM Distributors


CC: Affected parties

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,