Tracking Prison Censorship in the United States

March 16, 2013
Communications Office
North Carolina Department of Public Safety
4201 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4201

RECORDS REQUEST

Dear Records Request Officer:

Pursuant to the state open records act, I request access to and copies of all records of independent reviews of disapproved mail from MIM(Prisons)/MIM Distributors to prisoners held by the state of North Carolina from January 1, 2011 to the present time, including any documents related to the decisions made in each case.

These documents can be sent to me at the street address above. If there are copying fees you can also just email the documents to [email protected], or notify me of the cost via email.
If my request is denied in whole or part, I ask that you justify all deletions by reference to specific exemptions of the act.

Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

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

17 March 2013

RE: review censorship

Dear Sir/Madam,

This letter is in response to the enclosed Letter to Publisher sent to MIM Distributors by Ms. Fay Lassiter. Over the last two years I've been writing to Lassiter and Ms. Cynthia Bostic to request, among other things, that they provide reasons for censoring mail from MIM Distributors. This recent letter from Lassiter states the reason as being, "A Code." As I've stated before, it is hard for us to address these issues when such meaningless explanations are put forth.

The letter does cite page 4 of Under Lock & Key No. 30. Based on the page numbers cited in the last couple notices we have received from your department it seems that pages containing the political ideology of MIM(Prisons) are being targeted for censorship. I would like to remind you of the law as established in Thornburgh v. Abbot, 490 U.S. 401:

"Wardens may not reject a publication 'solely because its content is religious, philosophical, political, social[,] sexual, or . . . unpopular or repugnant'"

I am requesting a review of the enclosed censorship decision. As I do so, I hope this legal standard will be kept in mind. And I, once again, request that you provide citation of how the newsletter in question violates the safety and security of the institution if you do uphold Ms. Lassiter's judgement.


Thank you,

Cynthia Bostic, Assistant Director
Support Services
4260 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4260

9 December 2012

RE: Blanket ban on mail at Marion CI

To Ms. Bostic,

I have not yet received any response to my letters to you dated November 12. However I did get copies returned to me from a Mr. XXXXXX XXXXXX (#XXXXXX), one of the affected parties being held in Marion Correctional Institution. It appears that the materials were censored and he was forced to pay to have them mailed back or destroyed. This corroborates other incidents I mentioned in my previous letter of petitions being censored at Marion CI with the justification that MIM Distributors is on the disapproved publication list.

As our staff has been over with you before, this list is used to ban the publication or mail from the organization, but is a one-year ban on the specific issue of a specific publication. So why is it that personal letters are being censored based on this list? We have not yet received a notice from your staff as to the reason for censoring the letters regarding censorship sent to Mr. XXXXXX, but if I may preemptively request a review of this decision as I cannot imagine what legitimate penological interest would allow you to censor these letters.


I would appreciate your taking the time to address this issue in a timely manner.

Thank you,

Prisoner filed a DC410 appeal form and a month later the Asst. Supers office says they are still reviewing this letter.

Cynthia Bostic, Assistant Director
Support Services
4260 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4260

19 November 2012

To Ms. Bostic,

This letter is in response to a "Letter To Publisher" from Fay Lassiter dated October 30, 2012. In a previous communication you state that it is overly burdensome to review censorship decisions more than fifteen days after the notice. Trust me, this is quite burdensome for us as well, and we do not have a paid full time staff to address these issues as your agency does. So I apologize for the delayed response, and will respond as soon as I am able in the future. But as you can see by checking the USPS Certified Mail tag on the letter, our mail retriever did not receive this letter until last week. I was holding the enclosed letter dated 12 November 2012 until I was able to get ahold of the most recent letter as I wanted my letter to be relevant to the most recent information.

All that said, such time restraints from your office do not preclude you from following the law in handling the mail between outside parties and the prisoners being held by your agency. I am requesting an independent review of the enclosed decision to censor Under Lock & Key No. 28. Once again there is no "Reason for Disapproval" listed on page 2 of the notice. Page 1 cites pages 2 and 13. Page 2 is merely a description of what Under Lock & Key and MIM(Prisons) are that is printed in each issue of the newsletter. This statement reads in part, "We encourage prisoners to join these battles while explicitly discouraging them from engaging in any violence or illegal acts." So I do not understand how this statement violates your mail rules.

Ms. Lassiter seems to have an issue with page 13 because it criticizes decisions she made regarding the censorship of previous issues of Under Lock & Key. We are very familiar with Ms. Lassiter's personal opinions on Under Lock & Key and whether or not prisoners should read it. But we hope that you will agree with us that she does not have the discretion to decide what prisoners in North Carolina are allowed to ready, only to apply the "legitimate penological interests" standard. Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, clearly asserted that you cannot censor things you find politically repugnant. Furthermore, Johnson v. Raemisch, 557 F.Supp.2d 964 (2008) directly addressed the issue of state agencies censoring materials that are critical of their agency claiming it was a "security threat." The courts are clear that this type of behavior is against federal laws.

On this same subject I have recently been notified by prisoners in Marion that a petition addressed to James French is being censored there because "MIM Distributors is on the disapproved publication list." I know you know this is not legal as we have had long discussions with you about the disapproved publication list in North Carolina, and how it cannot be used to censor any mail from an organization or company. You should also be aware that prisoners have a right to "petition the government for a redress of grievance," which was the purpose of the petition.

Please let me know whether or not you agree with my interpretation of the law described above and whether you will allow prisoners in North Carolina to receive Under Lock & Key No. 28.


Thank you,

Cynthia Bostic, Assistant Director
Support Services
4260 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4260

19 November 2012

To Ms. Bostic,

This letter is in response to a "Letter To Publisher" from Fay Lassiter dated October 30, 2012. In a previous communication you state that it is overly burdensome to review censorship decisions more than fifteen days after the notice. Trust me, this is quite burdensome for us as well, and we do not have a paid full time staff to address these issues as your agency does. So I apologize for the delayed response, and will respond as soon as I am able in the future. But as you can see by checking the USPS Certified Mail tag on the letter, our mail retriever did not receive this letter until last week. I was holding the enclosed letter dated 12 November 2012 until I was able to get ahold of the most recent letter as I wanted my letter to be relevant to the most recent information.

All that said, such time restraints from your office do not preclude you from following the law in handling the mail between outside parties and the prisoners being held by your agency. I am requesting an independent review of the enclosed decision to censor Under Lock & Key No. 28. Once again there is no "Reason for Disapproval" listed on page 2 of the notice. Page 1 cites pages 2 and 13. Page 2 is merely a description of what Under Lock &Key and MIM(Prisons) are that is printed in each issue of the newsletter. This statement reads in part, "We encourage prisoners to join these battles while explicitly discouraging them from engaging in any violence or illegal acts." So I do not understand how this statement violates your mail rules.

Ms. Lassiter seems to have an issue with page 13 because it criticizes decisions she made regarding the censorship of previous issues of Under Lock & Key. We are very familiar with Ms. Lassiter's personal opinions on Under Lock & Key and whether or not prisoners should read it. But we hope that you will agree with us that she does not have the discretion to decide what prisoners in North Carolina are allowed to ready, only to apply the "legitimate penological interests" standard. Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, clearly asserted that you cannot censor things you find politically repugnant. Furthermore, Johnson v. Raemisch, 557 F.Supp.2d 964 (2008) directly addressed the issue of state agencies censoring materials that are critical of their agency claiming it was a "security threat." The courts are clear that this type of behavior is against federal laws.

On this same subject I have recently been notified by prisoners in Marion that a petition addressed to James French is being censored there because "MIM Distributors is on the disapproved publication list." I know you know this is not legal as we have had long discussions with you about the disapproved publication list in North Carolina, and how it cannot be used to censor any mail from an organization or company. You should also be aware that prisoners have a right to "petition the government for a redress of grievance," which was the purpose of the petition.

Please let me know whether or not you agree with my interpretation of the law described above and whether you will allow prisoners in North Carolina to receive Under Lock & Key No. 28.


Thank you,

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

May 31, 2012

RE: Censorship of Under Lock & Key No. 25 (March/April 2012)

Dear Ms. Bostic,

We would like to appeal the censorship of the above-listed publication. Please see attached notificatino.

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

12 November 2012

To Ms. Bostic,

We are in receipt of your two letters dated October 1, 2012 addressed to XYZ, responding to h inquiries made in June of this year. In one you state that conducting reviews of decisions to censor mail is time consuming and burdensome when the request is delayed. In the other letter you respond to her request for statistics on the review process stating that you do not provide such information.

How is it that so much time and effort goes into the review process and after over a year of requesting substantiation for your decisions you have not provided any? Certainly you can provide us with documentation of the reviews of our own mail.

As I have pointed out to you repeatedly, the notifications of censorship that we receive from your staff is hit or miss in providing any justification for the decision to censor. Sometimes they list a page number, but no further information. Sometimes we don't even get that. And I have not seen one instance where your "review" of their decisions has provided any justification. Is there or is there not any evidence that an independent review process exists within the NC Department of Public Safety? If there is, can you please provide documentation of such for the incidents of censorship involving mail from MIM Distributors for the past year?


Thank you,