Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

Due to the fact that I already have a lawsuit pending against various officials here on this unit and the Executive Director William Stevenson, I feel this is a form of retaliation due to the fact that several witnesses over-heard the mailroom clerk inform me that there was no appeal as the issue involved was unappealable. But after he gave me the copy of the denial form he had checked that I stated that I did not wish to appeal the denial! So I'm letting you know about this and that I have filed a Step One Grievance regarding the matter. I have collected witness statements from six other prisoners/comrades housed in the area with me.

Publications Review Committee
Virginia Department of Corrections
PO Box 26963
Richmond, VA 23261

November 27, 2014

RE: Censorship of Under Lock & Key #39 and draft issue #40 to XXX

Dear Publications Review Committee,

Recently MIM Distributors was informed by Mr. XX that Under Lock & Key #39 (July/August 2014) and Draft ULK #40 were disapproved by the Publication Review Committee. We did not receive any notification of this censorship. You are required, by Virginia Inmate Mail policy, to notify us of these rejections: "If opened, the unauthorized correspondence will be returned directly to the sender if known, with a written explanation for disapproval." (see https://vadoc.virginia.gov/offenders/prison-life/mail.shtm)

Further, court cases have upheld this requirement. In particular Montcalm Publishing Co. v. Beck, 80 F.3d105 (4th Cir. 1996) includs the following ruling regarding Virginia Department of Corrections Operating Procedure: "We hold that publishers are entitled to notice and an opportunity to be heard when their publications are disapproved for receipt by inmate subscribers."

We were never notified of this mail rejection, a clear violation of policy. Furtther, on August 26 we received a letter from Louis B Cei, Chair of this committee assuring us that we would receive notification of future mail denials. We appreciate Mr. Cei's assurance but we need to see the follow through and actually receive these denial notifications or you will continue to be out of compliance with your own policies.

We request the following actions:
- A copy of the official inmate mail policy for the VA DOC
- Notification of all MIM Distributors rejected mail directly from the prison upon rejection
- Appeal the censorship of the two publications listed above

I appreciate your consideration, and anticipate your response.

Sincerely,

MIM Distributors

CC: Affected parties
Benjamin Wright, Warden
River North Correctional Center
329 Dell Brook Lane
Independence, VA 24348

Deputy Director
Division of Operations
Virginia Department of Corrections
PO Box 26963
Richmond, VA 23261

March 18, 2015

RE: Censorship of Under Lock & Key #39 to Mr. XXX

Dear Deputy Director,

We recently received a copy of the notification to publisher of publication disapproval for Under Lock & Key #39, which was mailed to Mr. XXX. Please note that we did not receive this letter on the date it was generated (November 11, 2014) but only were sent a copy after we appealed the lack of notification of censorship to the Publication Review committee. As a result, it was impossible for us to appeal the decision within 15 calendar days.

This letter is to request a review of the denial. The reason cited is Criteria D which reads: "Material, documents or photographs that emphasize depictions or promotions of violence, disorder, insurrection, terrorist, or criminal activity in violation of state or federal laws or the violation of the Offender Disciplinary Procedure."

In the rejection notice it states "The numbers for those pages that were reviewed on which violations were found are listed above with the issue containing them." But there are no pages listed.

With this letter we request a list of specific pages in Under Lock & Key #39 that meet Criteria D, and an explanation of the content on those pages that is promoting the acts in question. We are confident that there is no such content in our publication.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Christine Eacho, Chair
Publications Review Committee
Virginia Department of Corrections
PO Box 26963
Richmond, VA 23261

March 18, 2015

RE: Censorship of Under Lock & Key #39 to Mr. XXX and Disapproved Publications List

Dear Publications Review Committee,

Thank you for your December 22, 2014 response to our letter protesting the denial of mail to Mr. XXX. In your letter you explain that we can not expect notification until the PRC has reviewed mail, potentially 30-60 days after it has been confiscated. We look forward to consistent notification from your committee any time mail is denied in the future. We did not ever receive a copy of the November 11 denial you mention and so we appreciate the copy you sent to us. Please note that there appears to be some problem with the PRC process for mailing out these notifications which we hope you will investigate so that we receive such mail in the future without needing to protest the lack of notification first. We also have not received any follow up on draft issue 40. Given that it has been more than 60 days we wonder if the notification was also lost for that disapproval.

You also say "PRC will not generate a list of disapproved rejected publications at this time, as this was generated to you previously." I am confused by this statement. First, even if we had received such a list in the past, clearly the list is changing all the time with review of new publications and potential reversals of previous rejections. This is not a valid reason to refuse to send us the requested information. In reality, just like the letters notifying us of mail denials, the disapproved publication list never reached our mailbox. There may be a problem with your records regarding mail you believe was sent to us, since none of it is actually getting here. Further, you do not mention our September 10 letter to the PRC in which we noted that:

"You mention that several of our publications are on the Master Disapproved list for reasons that do not match with the list we received from Mr. XXXXXX. Mr. XXXXXX received his list from the prison so there is apparently some incorrect information circulating and being misapplied by staff. We hope you will be able to clear up this confusion and ensure VA policies regarding mail will be applied appropriately.

"Please forward us a copy of this master disapproved list so that we can have a complete list of our publications that have been censored and the reasons for this. Mr. XXXXXX is being denied our literature for reasons of sex acts or Spanish content, which your letter confirms is incorrect. We will be able to use your Master List to appropriately appeal the denials. Similarly, we would like to know which MIM Theory journals are approved for offenders to purchase as you indicated that 5 of them are on the list as approved."

As you can clearly see, there are discrepancies on the list, and reasons given for disapproval that make absolutely no sense and do not match the content of the publications. Again we reiterate our request that you send us a copy of the most recent disapproved publications. There is no reasonable justification for refusing this request.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Publications Review Committee
Virginia Department of Corrections
PO Box 26963
Richmond, VA 23261

June 20, 2015

RE: Disapproved Publications List

Dear Mr. Moody,

Thank you for your April 14, 2015 response to our March letter requesting a copy of all disapproved publications from our company. The list that you sent is very helpful. In summary, it appears that the following publications are disapproved:

Under Lock & Key 15, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 36, 37, and 39

For some of these publications page numbers are listed which we assume are the cause of the denials. And for all there is a letter code listed which is either “D”, “F” or both “D,F”. From the 803-2 Incoming Publications rules (https://vadoc.virginia.gov/about/procedures/documents/800/803-2.pdf) I assume these refer to the reasons:

D. Material, documents, or photographs that emphasize depictions or promotions of violence, disorder, insurrection, terrorist, or criminal activity in violation of state or federal laws or the violation of the Offender Disciplinary Procedure
Note: This criterion shall not be used to exclude publications that describe such acts in the context of a story or moral teaching unless the description of such acts is the primary purpose of the publication. No publication generally recognized as having artistic or literary value should be excluded under this criterion.

F. Material that depicts, describes, or promotes gang bylaws, initiations, organizational structure, codes, or other gang-related activity or association

Fortunately for all concerned, none of the publications on this list violate either of these criteria. We would remind you that the rule D actually includes the very important caveat: “This criterion shall not be used to exclude publications that describe such acts in the context of a story or moral teaching unless the description of such acts is the primary purpose of the publication.” We encourage you to initiate a review of all rejections to forestall future legal action.

We also want to address the publications NOT on this list. The following publications have been rejected by Virginia prisons, apparently in contradiction with the determination by your Publication Review Committee:

Under Lock & Key 32
MIM Theory 10
MIM Theory 9

Now that we have clearly established which publications are denied, we ask that the above publications, which are approved for receipt by VA prisoners, be delivered to Mr. XXX.

Lastly, you did not address our request from April:

Similarly, we would like to know which MIM Theory journals are approved for offenders to purchase as you indicated that 5 of them are on the list as approved.

We anxiously anticipate your response with a list of APPROVED MIM Theory journals.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Department of Corrections
ATTN: Library Service Administrator
501 S Calhoun St
Tallahassee, FL 32399-2500

June 20, 2015

RE: Rejection of Under Lock & Key 40 at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution

Dear Ms. Morrison,

This letter is in response to notifications received by Mr. XXX at Santa Rosa CI regarding the rejection of Under Lock & Key No. 40 The purpose of this letter is to appeal this decisions and have the newsletter delivered to Mr. XXXXXX. This is an interesting and troubling rejection because:

1. Last year a copy this same magazine was returned to us by the mailroom Dade CI and after we sent a letter of appeal the literature review committee responded that this issue of ULK was not impounded or denied. It appeared that this was just a mistake by the mailroom with no justification. As a result we assume that ULK40 is not in fact prohibited.
2. The reason given for rejection ULK40 is as follows:

"Is rejected for reasons not related to subject matter. (Specify):
The publication is rejected due to reasons other than criteria and over limit. This publication was removed from the publication list via an inmate request to the mailroom."

We are unable to construct an appeal to this rejection without any reasons for rejection beyond the “Not related to subject matter”. If the reason is not for subject matter we can not imagine what other possible reason there could be. We also question the “inmate request to mailroom” claim and request some evidence for this justification since the prisoner in question actually sent us a copy of the rejection and clearly does not want his mail rejected.

Further, this rejection was not sent to MIM(Distributors), and in fact the “date mailed to sender” form on the back is left blank. As you know from previous correspondence, we have an ongoing problem with Florida prisons failing to notify us of denial of our publications. I am once again requesting that the FDOC follow its own policies and respect the publisher's rights to Due Process under the Fourteenth Amendment (see Montcalm Publ'g Corp. v. Beck, 80 F.3d 105, 106 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 928 (1996)).

I am requesting that you allow Mr. XXX to receive issues 40 of Under Lock & Key. He has more recently moved to Apalachee Correctional Institution so you can have the mailroom at Santa Rosa CI forward his publication to this new address.


Sincerely,

Superintendent Ron Haynes
Clallam Bay Correction Center
1830 Eagle Crest Way
Clallam Bay, WA 98326

June 20, 2015

RE: Inappropriate censorship of letter to Mr. XXX

Dear Superintendent,

Mr. XXX recently sent us a copy of a mail rejection form dated 6/9/2015, given to Mr. XXXXXX for mail sent from MIM Distributors. There is no indication of the content of that mailing but the rejection reason listed is “27. Attempting unauthorized offender to offender correspondence.”

We recently sent Mr. XXX one item of mail recently which could be the mail in question. On June 5 we sent him a news article, in both English and translated into Spanish, for his review. This article was published in Under Lock & Key, our newsletter, and had no information about the author or anything else that might facilitate offender to offender correspondence. The article included general reporting about prison conditions, but was completely devoid of anything that might be considered correspondence between prisoners.

The WA DOC mail rule this letter supposedly violated reads: “27. Contains correspondence, information, or other items relating to another offender(s) without prior approval from the Superintendent/designee, or attempts or conveys unauthorized offender to offender correspondence.” We are confident that if you review the letter you will see that there is no possible question of violating this rule. We wonder if this was rejected by a mailroom worker who does not read Spanish and so did not understand the content of the letter. Although the exact content of the Spanish portion was included in English so there should have been no confusion by J. Campbell, the mailroom employee who signed the rejection.

As you are certainly aware, the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly stated that 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)). We want to remind you that your mailroom personnel are obligated to inform both the prisoner and MIM Distributors of the censorship decisions that the Mailroom staff has made with regard to mail we send. We did not receive any notification of this rejection and hope that this will serve as an opportunity to retrain your mailroom staff in this requirement.

We look forward to your review of this mail and delivery to Mr. XXX once you determine that the rejection was in fact an error by the mailroom staff.

Sincerely,

You have the option to file a grievance only after the publication has been sent to the Publication Review Committee and you have received their decision