Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

Assistant Section Chief
Support Services
4260 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4260

4 November 2014

RE: continued censorship of approved literature

Dear Ms. Bostic,

After writing you in mid-March and mid-May about the censorship of Under Lock & Key 36, you notified MIM Distributors in a June 4 letter that Under Lock & Key 36 will be allowed in North Carolina prisons. When my colleague requested that all copies of this issue of the newsletter be delivered to the prisoners they were mailed to, you informed her that MIM Distributors must resend the newsletters at their own cost. Since then, numerous copies have been resent, and we have confirmed that at least 2 have been censored (see enclosed delivery confirmation).

I am cc'ing the wardens of Scotland Correctional Facility and New Hanover Correctional Center to notify them that their mailroom staff has not been following the decisions of your office. The two prisoners affected are:

WWW ZZZ #AAA
XXX YYY #BBB

We are requesting that your office deliver copies of Under Lock & Key 36 to the prisoners above in order to ensure delivery. We have found in the past that administrative intervention can help remedy these problems at the local level and hope you will assist us in this matter.

Sincerely,

Katy Poole, Acting Correctional Administrator
Scotland Correctional Institution
PO Box 1808
Laurinburg, NC 28353-1808

2 December 2014

RE: censorship of approved literature (follow up)

Dear Ms. Poole,

I received your letter from 18 November responding to my inquiry about the censorship of literature approved by the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. While I appreciate the updated address for the person mentioned in that letter, you did not address my concern about the disappearance of this approved literature in your mailroom. Below is a list of other prisoners who have not received the same approved item, Under Lock & Key Issue 36:

[omitted]

As you can see from the enclosed U.S. Postal Service certified mail receipts, all of these were mailed after your department had approved Under Lock & Key Issue 36. To ensure that your staff was aware of this decision, the newsletters were mailed with copies of the letter from Assistant Section Chief, Cynthia Bostic approving it for receipt by North Carolina prisoners. Yet no one seems to have received it and no one has been notified of any censorship. How is it that this mail was not delivered?

I am requesting that you remedy this situation and ensure that all of the above people receive their copies of Under Lock & Key 36.

Sincerely,

Assistant Section Chief
Support Services
4260 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4260

2 December 2014

RE: continued censorship of approved literature (follow up)

Dear Ms. Bostic,

I received your letter from 13 November upholding the censorship of Under Lock & Key Issue 39. While I find it regrettable that you objected to the commemoration of those killed and abused by the state of New York in Attica in 1971, I do appreciate the explanation this time and will pass it along to the editor.

I have not received a response from you to my more recent letter regarding the failure of many facilities to deliver an approved issue of ULK, Issue 36. This letter is to follow up on that, as I did receive a response from Katy Poole at Scotland CI, who informed me that Mr. XXX YYY has since left Scotland. She did not address the missing mail. So I am writing again to expand the list of prisoners whose mail has gone missing without explanation from your department.

On July 22, following the notification that ULK 36 was approved by your office, and following your assertion to Ms. Clarke that MIM Distributors must mail new copies of the newsletter to prisoners on their mailing list, new copies of ULK 36 were sent along with the letter of approval from your office to the following prisoners: [omitted]

As you can see, while most of the missing mail was at Scotland CI, this pattern seems to have occurred at a number of facilities. And as noted, the mailroom staff could not plead ignorance to your decision since your letter was mailed along with the newsletters via U.S. Certified Mail. The U.S. Postal Service has confirmed that these newsletters were received at each facility on 25 July. I am reiterating my request for your assistance in assuring that these prisoners receive their newsletters, which have been mailed to them twice now by MIM Distributors. It is evident that intervention is required to enforce the rules at these facilities.

Sincerely,

Assistant Section Chief
Support Services
4260 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4260

25 December 2014

RE: continued censorship of approved literature (follow up 2)

Dear Ms. Bostic,

I just received your letter dated 5 December, postmarked 15 December addressing the continued censorship of Under Lock & Key 36 at various North Carolina prisons, even after it was approved by your office. To answer your letter, no, you have not addressed my request, which was for you to ensure delivery of said newsletter to the numerous people who have been denied it by your department. I even suggested a means by which to carry this out. In other states when mailroom staff continue to throw out mail we have succeeded in getting mail delivered by having it handled by administrative personnel such as yourself. Instead, you continue to assert that the mail was not refused.

In my previous letter (2 December 2014) I included documentation from the United States Postal Service showing that the newsletters, with copies of your approval letter, addressed to at least 13 people were delivered to 6 different facilities. Am I to believe that the USPS is lying and that NCDPS staff, who have repeatedly not delivered mail from MIM Distributors are telling the truth when you tell me, ?They report not refusing delivery of the publication to the two inmates you mentioned in your correspondence nor any other inmates.?? Is there no rule of law in North Carolina that you will continue to assert that you have followed the rules in this matter when the evidence clearly indicates the contrary?

MIM Distributors has attempted to mail this newsletter two times to about a dozen people being held prisoner by your department. The second time they were mailed along with your letter stating that the mail was approved to be received, so the mailroom could not claim ignorance of that decision. This is my sixth letter to you, not including letters to wardens of the offending facilities, about this one newsletter. The original newsletter was first mailed out in January 2014. Personally, I have been engaged with the literature review process in North Carolina for years and I have yet to see any evidence of any real process. I hope you can prove me wrong by following through on your word in this instance.

To reiterate, my request is that Under Lock & Key 36 be delivered by your department to the 13 people listed in my previous letter as you have indicated multiple times you would do. Once this is done, my request will be addressed.

Sincerely,

The following items are considered contraband and are not permitted in the facility:
Magazines, books, any correspondence containing sexually explicit material, information about the fabrication of weapons or explosive devices, any gang related material, electrical, plumbinb, or information on locks, information advocating overthrow of government, or anything containing material deemed to be detrimental to the safety and/or security of the facility, whether sent from publisher or citizen

Reason/ Comments: seized: pending appeal