Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

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,