MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
The Florida Department of Corrections has been on a censorship
tirade, which
serves as a nice compliment to their habit of banning books.(1). The
FDOC has a rule (Section 15 of 33-501.401) which authorizes the
impoundment or rejection of any publication which “depicts how to make
an instrument to apply a tattoo … describes tattooing techniques … or
contains a tattoo pattern or photograph …”
ULK’s have been censored because certain pages “Could be used as
tattoo patterns.” That is, the FDOC has the right to censor any
publication which contains anything which could possibly serve as a
pattern for a tattoo, and whether it could be a tattoo pattern is up to
their discretion. Their censorship “rules” say “censor whatever you
want!”
Not a single one of our publications has ever listed tattoo patterns.
We print the art that prisoners send us, and images that help express
the articles they accompany. We have a recommendation for the FDOC:
prisoners could use their cell bars as tattoo patterns. How about you
remove them?
In the last four years, of all the prison systems where we’ve sent 10
or more books, Florida has the highest rate of censorship at about 30%
of books or pamphlets (excluding our newsletter and letters to
prisoners). Meanwhile only 26% of books we’ve sent to Florida in that
time have been confirmed received by the prisoner. The week before
Prison Banned Books Week, JPay returned some articles we printed and
mailed to a reader after many publications we sent were censored. JPay
enclosed FDOC censorship forms in each envelope that were not filled,
therefore not providing any justification for returning our mail. We
give Florida a grade of D for their mail policies and practices. They
are one of the worst, but not as bad as states that block any piece of
mail we send in.
We will continue to be censored so long as we reveal the oppression
in the United $nakes. We will fight it until the oppressed have been
liberated.
1: Patricia Mazzei, 22 April 2023, “Florida at Center of Debate as
School Book Bans Surge Nationally”, The New York Times
There are 65 organizations who have signed on to the 2024 Prison Banned Books Week
campaign. What unites us is a belief that there is good in lifting
the restrictions on literature that U.$. prisoners have access to.
Without having asked all of the participants, we’d wager that we all
agree that by understanding the past and understanding the ideas of
others, that people can better understand our present and act on it in a
way that benefits humynity overall. There are certain ideas that we may
take from the Age of the Enlightenment that we all share.
Finding Truth in Books
Where many of the organizations in this campaign probably disagree
with us is in seeing that each piece of literature has a class character
to it. As part of our world view as Marxists, we recognize that, in a
class society, there is class character in everything humyns
create..
There is an adage that the truth is hidden in books. But as we’ve
discussed before, not all books
are true or based in materialist science.(1) In a sense, we go to
the library and read books to bury the lies within books and all around
us. We must understand different arguments and ways of thinking in order
to see their accuracy or fallacy.
Rather than think of the “marketplace of ideas” where a bunch of
people bring their individual thoughts to compete with others (the
individualist view), we see a war between two main class positions in
the realm of ideas (and elsewhere) – that of the bourgeoisie vs. that of
the proletariat. There is a reason why prisoners are the most restricted
readers in this country, and why New Afrikan, Indigenous and Chican@
literature are targeted as “Security Threat Group” material.
Cultural Revolution
If there is one phenomenon that defines Maoism, it is the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China (1966-1976) and the
lessons learned from it. But wait, didn’t they like burn books and
punish academics during the GPCR?
In essence, the GPCR was an unleashing of almost a billion people to
participate in the war between the proletarian and the bourgeois lines
in politics and production. Not only that, this was a people that were
more than 90% illiterate before the liberation of China by the Communist
Party in 1949.
“My conclusion… was that China had made greater progress in
liberating masses of people from illiteracy and bringing millions some
knowledge of scientific and industrial technique than any nation had
ever done in so short a time.
“…By 1960… about $2,600,000,000) was devoted to education and
science, or fifty percent more than the direct budgetary military
expenditure….
“In 1960 United States expenditure on education at all levels was
less than four percent of the national income, or slightly less than the
$18,000,000,000 Americans spent for alcoholic beverages and tobacco.
“In 1957 Premier Chou En-lai had estimated illiteracy over the whole
country at seventy percent. Mr Tsui said that by 1960 the percentage had
been reduced… to about sixty-six percent for the rural areas and
twenty-four percent in the cities.”(2)
By 1979, three years after the GPCR, illiteracy was down to 30%.(3)
Yet the GPCR is known in the United $tates for shutting down schools and
attacking professors. These things were central to the student struggles
on campuses across China. And in these struggles there were Red Guard
factions taking up different positions and political lines, fighting
against each other. Students were challenging the hierarchical roles in
the university and the traditional methods of study, without always
having the answers. There are even documented cases of Red Guards
burning religious books as a means of attacking reactionary ideas. But
this was not a coordinated effort by the state as is happening in
prisons and schools across the United $tates today, the so-called “land
of the free”. We can see parallels to the critiques of the Chinese
student movement in the United $tates today where “right to an
education” is being used to silence protests against U.$. arms being
used for a genocide in Palestine.
Interestingly, after praising Chinese literacy in the quote above,
Edgar Snow quotes a U.$. Library of Congress staffer stating that the
Chinese concept of education “is not distinguishable from
indoctrination, propaganda and agitation.”(2) This is where we would
again stress the class perspective, and how propaganda is in the eye of
the beholder:
“Westerners perceive Chinese education under Mao as”propaganda,”
because it encourages values and goals which contradict the goals of
capitalism. These values and goals taught in China during the Cultural
Revolution were consistent with the building of socialism. Education in
Western nations is not perceived as “propaganda” by those who,
consciously or not, agree with the goals of capitalism/imperialism and
patriarchy. Similarly, advertising for capitalist products, while
recognized as very influential on people’s opinions and actions, is not
perceived as “brain-washing” by those who benefit from capitalism and
have therefore decided to tolerate it.”(4)
The totalitarian control of corporations like Global Tel*Link, JPay,
and Securus over what prisoners read, write, listen to and communicate
with people outside is a good example of what our society accepts.
Allyn and Adele Ricket wrote about their experience as prisoners in
China for providing intelligence to the United $tates Government. This
is one of the best accounts of the Chinese socialist approach to
education/re-education. They were imprisoned during the early years of
the revolution and witnessed the change in approach, partially due to
changing conditions (the new government had been established and
prisoners were less rebellious) and partially due to lessons learned.
“By 1953… the authorities acknowledged that their former overemphasis on
suppression had been a mistake.”(5)
Their description of staff at their prison sounds unbelievable to a
U.$. prisoner:
“he always seemed to have time to listen to the troubles of one or
another of the prisoners or to do countless little things which showed
how serious he was in looking out for the welfare of his charges.”
At first Allyn Rickett thought this was a bit of a propaganda show,
but this incident changed eir mind:
“I looked through the crack in the palisade built around our cell
window to obstruct the view. There was Supervisor Shen patiently going
along the line turning every article of the prisoners’ clothing to make
certain they would be dry by the time we were to take them in after
supper.”(6)
Regarding censorship, the Ricketts also compare the news in China
over time and to the Amerikan press:
“Publication of news is determined by its usefulness in increasing
the people’s social consciousness and morality and furthering the
Communist Party’s program for the development of the country. Therefore
the content of the news is limited to what the authorities feel will
serve these ends.
“To our mind, no matter how sincere in their purpose the authorities
may be, in violating the principle of the right to know they are taking
a dangerous step. …One of the most encouraging recent developments in
China has been a liberalization of this concept of a controlled press.
[written in 1957]
“…Our experience in living in and reading the press of both countries
has led us to the conclusion that the Chinese today are still receiving
a clearer picture of what is happening here than the American people are
of what is taking place in China.”(7)
Ten years later the GPCR will begin and “big character posters” were
promoted as a way for the masses to express their grievances against
Party officials, or other issues they faced. The Chinese experiment in
socialism was unique in how it regularly attempted to open up mass
participation in ideological struggle and in organizing society as far
as could be tolerated without creating chaos. And even then there was
some chaos, which is what the GPCR is usually criticized for.
The press is a battleground for class struggle. In a condition where
all the books were bourgeois, the socialist government had a lot of work
to do to catch up. And this was done largely in face-to-face study
groups, whether on campuses, on farms or in prisons.
The ideas of the old system must be surpassed, but not erased. Marx
showed how different economic systems gave birth to subsequent systems,
and how the ideas evolved to reflect those new systems. This is all
important to the understanding of humyn history and to the development
and continued advancement of humyn knowledge.
Yesterday we published a recent prison
book ban list from North Carolina. Today we will analyze and publish
a banned literature list from the Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections.
The state of Pennsylvania holds around 40,000 people in its prisons,
compared to 30,000 in North Carolina. Yet Pennsylvania has only 398
currently banned titles compared to North Carolina’s 480. The
Pennsylvania list is not refreshed each year, with some items being
banned as far back as 2012, so it seems that overall North Carolina bans
more books/publications. Across Pennsylvania school districts there were
186 banned
books in 2022/2023 school year. Again, we see that prisons are
banning more literature than schools are.
click to download the Pennsylvania DOC banned book list
There is a lot of overlap between Pennsylvania and North Carolina’s
lists. Pennsylvania seems more aggressive in banning sexual content,
which accounted for at least 130 of the 398 titles on their list. (Note:
On both lists we do not have reasons for the censorship, and we did not
confirm the actual content of each item.) Unlike North Carolina, we did
not see any “street novels” or “urban fiction” on the Pennsylvania list,
so this was the biggest difference, perhaps accounting for the shorter
list. Street novels rival pornography on the North Carolina ban
list.
The Pennsylvania list also differs in that it lists titles that were
permitted after being reviewed. There were 664 titles that were listed
as permitted, giving greater insight into how they implement their
rules.
Like North Carolina, tattoo books/magazines were often banned, along
with topics like art, guns, hacking, drugs and martial arts.
Pennsylvania had more prisoner advocacy related materials on their ban
list (like Prison Health News), as well as newspapers that
cater to prisoners. They also had more reference books and business
related books for some reason (like Legal Forms for Starting and
Owning Your Own Business). The obvious political motivations of
censorship come through in items like Stop Law Enforcement Violence
Against Women of Color and Trans People of Color.
While North Carolina seemed to only target The Final Call
and Under Lock & Key there is a much broader list of
newspapers that have certain issues banned in Pennsylvania. At the top
of that list are The San Francisco Bayview, Workers
World, and Under Lock & Key. Other than Under Lock
& Key itself, there were no other items on the ban list that
MIM Distributors distributes to prisoners, though some were on the
permitted list. This mostly conforms with our records that show
Under Lock & Key is almost the only thing that has been
noted as censored or not received in recent years. The one item that
shows up on our list a couple
times for Pennsylvania censorship is our Maoist Glossary.
As mentioned previously,
most of our mail is never confirmed received or not.
Digital Mail Makes
Physical Mail Harder
Censorship is challenging to track in the state of Pennsylvania. By
law, authorities are required to send us notice of any censorship when
it does occurs, but in practice this is uncommon if not rare. The
overwhelming majority of our censorship cases in PA consist of mail
simply disappearing in the system. What makes tracking censorship so
challenging is that this missing mail includes letters that we send
prisoners detailing the history of mail we’ve sent to them and when we
sent it. Sometimes we have to resort to mailing the cellmates of the
prisoners we were trying to contact. It’s amazing how well anger at the
police can be communicated just through handwriting.
The fact that Pennsylvania seems to be quietly censoring our glossary
aligns with the fact that their tablets provided through GTL do not
offer any dictionaries among the 8805 titles available. Only 112 books
are free on those tablets. These numbers are from Freedom of Information
Act research by prisonbannedbooksweek.org, which also reveals that PA
has a contract for $50,000,000.00 with GTL that includes kickbacks for
“all annual revenues for music, e-messaging, games, lobby deposit fees
and ebooks up to $4,350,000” at 22.5%. While kickbacks are interesting,
note that at best the state is getting about 8% of the money back that
they are giving to GTL to run their prison tablets. State bureaucrats
are motivated to balance budgets, but it’s not like the state is making
money on this deal. It is only GTL that is walking away with profits,
not the state, and definitely not the families of prisoners who are
paying exorbitant fees for these services. The comrade who sent us this
ban list wrote:
“I bought this GTL tablet model number TG0802 in January of 2019 for
damn near $160.00. But since ViaPath took over GTL a year ago or so, the
price has dropped down to $80. But these are refurbished tablets. When I
get released I will send it back to the company via the form paying only
shipping and handling. Then you get a brand new one without all the
D.O.C. settings and restrictions on them… Every song I bought will be on
it too.”
It is nice that they have an option to allow you to keep your
purchases after release from prison, but we wouldn’t recommend keeping a
tablet with a cellular data receiver, camera, GPS and microphone on it
from Global Tel*Link after your release.
Thanks to the new digital mail system, Pennsylvania DOC now has three
different addresses to send mail to requiring one to identify the type
of mail as either General Incoming Correspondence, Photographs,
Publications, Photo Books, Official Documents, Original Transactional
Documentation, Legal Mail (which can be either “For Attorneys” or “For
Courts/Court Entity”), or Miscellaneous.
Under Lock & Key 83 is the only recent issue on the
“DENIED” list in Pennsylvania for the reason “Information contained on
page 15 speaks of rising up against authority.” Yet every recent issue
has been censored for some prisoners, showing that this ban list is only
a piece of the censorship going on in Pennsylvania. In recent years this
censorship is a combination of mail just gone missing as mentioned
above, or mail returned and stamped “REFUSED: Go to WWW.COR.PA.GOV”,
implying that we are not following the mail rules. But when you go to
their website, the mail rules clearly state that newspapers go to the
facility, and many PA prisoners receive them this way. But alas, some
mailroom supervisors disagree with the rules.
Despite all these confusing hoops that prison mail must go through,
like elsewhere, drugs are more widespread than ever in Pennsylvania
prisons. Rampant drug use and censored books and letters are just two of
many indications of the failure of U.$. prisons to do anything positive
for society.
I am a prisoner at Menard Correctional Center in Illinois. There is a
ban here on used books. All books have to be new, and any organization
that sends free books to prisoners can’t send them to Menard.
The other issue at Menard is the restrictions on the tablets. There
is no phone or any access to reading case law on the tablets. Instead
they offer streaming, music, game center, GTL podcasts and GTL newsfeed,
and old movies and television. None of this is any help to prisoners
here at Menard.
MIM(Prisons) adds: There is nothing in Illinois DOC
Publication Reviews Directive that requires books be new, so this
appears to be a practice specific to this facility. Menard
Correctional Center is a maximum security facility that has been
notorious for its use of long-term isolation and other abuses over the
years. This practice of adding restrictions on books to people in
segregation is all too common in this country where prisons aim to
punish and not rehabilitate.
Companies like Global Tel*Link (GTL) (as well as Securus, CenturyLink
Public Communications, Advanced Technologies Group, and Keefe Commissary
Group) offer hundreds, if not thousands, of free books available on
their tablets from Project Gutenberg, meaning these books are majority
95+ years old. So it is little surprise that they are lacking in
practical information that prisoners in Illinois need.
A North Carolina prisoner writes: Dear comrades, I’ve
enclosed a banned book/publications list put out by our prison.
I can’t get or make copies. Nobody can help me with copies. North
Carolina prisons want all non-legal mail sent to Phoenix, MD for
electronic scanning that takes up to two weeks to be done. Yet legal
mail, books and newsletters are sent to the prisons themselves. Any idea
what a burden that is? Our people got to remember two different
addresses. Organizations have to mail us letter replies to one address
and books to another.
This prison blocks almost all sexual mags, even non-nude, even though
NC-DAC policy approves such books. Not Harnett Correctional
Institution.
Notice the date? This is the banned book list I was given in June
2024. Any book past a year is supposed to be re-reviewed. They
aren’t.
Analyzing NC Ban List
Some famous titles on the list include Where the Crawdads
Sing and the often-censored in U.$. schools, I Know Why the
Caged Bird Sings. Other notable items include multiple self-help
books, including ones specifically for prisoners preparing for release,
and prisoner resource lists. There are multiple legal resources on the
list, one our comrade mentions. And there are books like Gender
Studies, Qigong and Tai Chi, and an astrology book that
can’t possibly violate any rules. Clearly censored for its political
content is Our Enemies in Blue, a critique of policing.
Prison Ramen is on the North Carolina ban list
Under Lock & Key is the second most censored newspaper
in North Carolina, after The Final Call, which appears 14 times
on the list (it also comes out a lot more frequently than ULK).
Both are clearly censored for political reasons.
The book list that this comrade received in June 2024 is dated
10/06/2023. Since October 2023, the following items have been rejected
by NCDPS: Under Lock & Key 82 and ULK 84, and a
comrade reported not receiving Under Lock & Key 85. A
prisoner appealed ULK 82, was denied, and then MIM
Distributors appealed and it was removed from the Master List of
Disapproved Publications. Most states have a central administrative
office that oversees the local mailroom decisions to censor, so it is
always worth appealing to these offices. There are no rights that you
don’t fight for. Years ago many comrades went further and engaged
in lawsuits over the mail in North Carolina, which seems to have
brought improvements in their practices in recent years.
By our count, at least 100 of the 480 items on the ban list contain
sexual content, most of them containing pornographic photos. While this
comrade points out that sexual content is not a reason for banning per
the law, North
Carolina Department of Adult Corrections policy Chapter D
0.0109(f)(11) does prohibit “Sexually explicit material which by its
nature or content poses a threat to the security, good order, or
discipline of the institution, or facilitates criminal activity.” It is
not clear how any of the materials in question fit this criteria.
Curiously, right after the release of this ban list, Under Lock & Key
79 was censored for the reason “naked woman’s breast”, which
just isn’t true at all, but should also not have been allowed by their
own rules.
The only topic to rival pornography on the ban list was “street
novels.” We counted at least 100 examples on this list (we did not look
up every title so these are likely undercounted). Most likely these are
censored for (f)(10) related to promoting “gang activity.”
The third most common topic on the ban list appeared to be
tattoo-related, with at least 20 examples. Other themes that appeared
more than a few times, in order of frequency, included: art, history of
famous criminals, cars, guns, survival, hacker, legal, and martial arts.
Unfortunately we have no real information on the literature that was not
put on the ban list to compare to.
According to the PEN America
Index of School Book Bans, there were 58 books banned in various
school districts across North Carolina in 2023. While the news reports
more on banned books in schools, we can see that banning literature is
much more frequent in prisons. And while the titles on these two lists
appear to have no overlap, the motivation behind most of the banned
literature seems to be an effort to not expose people to books that
depict things the censors don’t want them to do.
North Carolina’s Overall
Rating
Overall, we have to give North Carolina a decent grade of C+ on their
mail policies and practices.
It’s unacceptable that almost every issue of Under Lock &
Key seems to either be censored, or at least not delivered to some
subscribers in NCDAC. This includes the recent example where they
censored ULK for art
depicting actions that their department describes in their own
rules. However, some subscribers in North Carolina have received
every recent issue of Under Lock & Key. There has been a
major improvement since 2012-2017
when censorship was so rampant in North Carolina that we couldn’t
even get a letter in telling a prisoner what mail we’ve sent them.
And yes, the multiple addresses are a burden as our comrade says. Pennsylvania
has three! You can see our list of mail
censored in North Carolina prisons over the last couple years and
see that even when newspapers and pamphlets were sent to the facility
they were sometimes returned stating, “This facility DOES NOT accept
friend and family mail directly.” And there were times where mail
printed on 8.5”x11” paper
was returned from TextBehind stating: Refused “TextBehind, INC does
not process privileged/legal mail”. It is clear these systems are
confusing to all involved.
Assuming those were honest mistakes, there hasn’t really been any
censorship of books or pamphlets from MIM Distributors in recent years
(just our newsletter), including some of our most censored literature in
other states. And this would not likely be the case if it weren’t for
the prisoners who fought censorship with appeals and lawsuits less than
a decade ago.
Over the last month I have made several requests to the mailroom
staff McCann and Internal Investigator Mason Kierznowski about ULK
86. After over a month of waiting McCann said that Investigations
and Intelligence (I.I.) was reviewing it.
Well, tonight I finally received it. They were holding onto
ULK and Prison Legal News from last month. I know if I
wasn’t on top of it they would have discarded it. I told Mason K. that
he was clearly in violation of the correspondence policy. You cannot
hold onto one’s mail for weeks without giving a confiscation slip.
Prior to all this, something bad happened indicating that they are
out to harm me.
On 22 July 2024, while under a lockdown I was taken to an upper level
secluded shower area to shower. I was left in this small stainless steel
shower with no ventilation. I could not breath. After yelling,
screaming, and kicking to be let out of the torture coffin, I was
finally let out. I almost died.
Then the officer cuffed me up and gave me the order of “let’s go.” I
went down the flight of steps and into my cell so I could get to my
inhaler and fan.
The officer filed a class B offense of “fleeing & resisting” when
he claimed he gave me a command to stop and I never heard him tell me
this. [MIM(Prisons): This comrade also sent us copies of written
statements from others affirming that the C.O. did not order em to
stop.]
On 9 September 2024, the same person that dismissed the frivolous
conduct report on your letter for
allegedly being laced with drugs, found me guilty. This is a serious
offense. She took my commissary and phone for 30 days. I lost my job and
my place in line for the honor dorm. I will be forced to stay where I
am, which is a 6’ by 9’ cell that is close to isolation conditions.
It’s a sad situation comrades. I cannot give up. They are beating me
down. I have to keep pushing on.
Everyone is counting on me. The reports on Pendleton in ULK
86 were awesome! I have supporters in you all.
Today is the first day of Prison Banned Books Week 2024 (PBBW). This
year the campaign will be focusing on how companies selling tablet
services to the state have exacerbated the problem of censorship in
prisons. MIM(Prisons) is one of dozens of organizations participating in
PBBW. You can view the full list at prisonbannedbooksweek.org,
where you can send letters to your legislators and letters to the editor
to call on prisons to allow donated books from organizations like ours,
as well as free digital books through local libraries. Also look for
#prisonbannedbooksweek on various social media platforms this week (you
can now follow us on
Mastodon).
Each day this week we will be publishing stories related to
censorship in prisons, and we ask our supporters to share them with your
networks using the hashtag #prisonbannedbooksweek. Censorship in prisons
has been at the heart of what we do since day one and is a daily
struggle for us and for our readers, as we must fight for our First
Amendment rights in this country. We will give you an overview of what
this looks like in this first installment for PBBW.
We hope this campaign encourages people to support our Free
Political Books to Prisoners Program with donations, to engage in
activism and legal advocacy in support of prisoners receiving a variety
of reading materials, and that it spreads awareness about the growing
control of information that these state/corporate partnerships are
bringing to our lives.
Our Books Program
While the MIM Free Political Books to Prisoners Program actually
began in 1988, our organization formed in late 2007, taking over the
duties of the MIM Prison Ministry. This work involves publishing a
regular newsletter for prisoners and corresponding with prisoners
through the mail, in addition to sending other forms of literature.
As we celebrate 17 years of existence, we approach the 200,000 mark
for the number of pieces of mail we have sent to prisoners over those
years. For all that mail our overall confirmed censorship rate is only
6%. However, 73% of our mail is never confirmed received or censored.
This is some combination of prisoners never writing us back, mail being
illegally censored and mail just being lost. While the percentages of
each are certainly in that order, we have no way of knowing what the
actual breakdown is of the fate of that 73% of mail we send out. For the
27% of mail that we can confirm, 4 out of 5 items do make it to their
recipients.
About 40,000 pieces of mail we’ve sent are letters to prisoners,
while over 6000 are books and zines by other authors. The remaining
almost 150,000 pieces of mail are literature that we publish, the
majority of it being our newsletter Under Lock &
Key, but this also includes many MIM
Theory journals, Chican@ Power and
the Struggle for Aztlán and various other pamphlets and study
packs.
Interestingly it is the other books and zines that are censored at a
higher rate (8.2%) than our own literature and letters (both less than
6%). The fact is that books and magazines do face a higher level of
scrutiny than newspapers and letters, and are often censored for
superficial reasons like the condition of the book or the publisher of
the book not matching the sender, etc.
Another common appearance on the list is, ironically, our Guide to Fighting
Censorship in Prisons, which we send to any prisoner facing
censorship at their facility.
You’ll also see in the list of censorship the occasional overturned
decision. This is due to the persistence of our comrades inside as well
as our volunteers on the outside who appeal as much of the unreasonable
censorship as they can. This is one of many tasks that we could use your
help with.
Prison and jail systems across the country continue to move to
digitize letters to read on tablets, and restrict books from more and
more sources, under the guise of fighting drugs. While drugs have not
decreased, our problems getting mail to prisoners have increased, as
you’ll read in the series of articles we’ll be publishing this week.
Missouri now has the strictest paper literature policy ever
implemented in a state prison system. People can ONLY obtain paper
literature by purchasing it themselves, in consultation with their
prison caseworker, with money drawn from their own commissary account
from a small selection of “approved vendors.” We’re finding that many of
our subscribers in Missouri cannot receive Under Lock & Key
because they have not paid for it.
Missouri is now contracting with Securus to serve all mail digitally
on tablets. Their contract includes a 1% administrative fee on “all
payments received by the contractor for all products and services
provided under the contract.” However, not all prisoners have tablets,
and some are anxious to get the privilege of paying $0.25 to send emails
to family.
Below are reports from Missouri prisoners in August 2024.
Censorship is real here at Crossroads Correctional Center. They are
trying to find ways to stop Under Lock & Key newspapers
from coming to Crossroads any way they can. Most of the time they have
no real reason to stop it. It’s hit or miss. And me and the brothers
really really need the info and good news that you bring knowing that
the fight is still on.
They stop our catalogs, they stop our books. It’s hard with this K2
taking our young minds and no one really there to push the fight. Most
of us find our fight to be few in numbers.
Here in the hole, they keep our tablets from us. Every prison except
for Crossroads Correctional Center has tablets. They charge us $0.79 a
stamp and really force us to buy them knowing that’s the only way to
reach our families seeing that they won’t give us our tablets in Ad-Seg.
Emails only cost $0.25 on tablets.
They won’t let us order reading books or magazines in Ad-Seg either,
saying we have to be on the yard to order books/magazines.
MIM(Prisons) adds: It is criminally absurd that people
being tortured in isolation are deprived of some of the few things that
can keep them sane in such conditions like reading material.
A comrade at Jefferson City Correctional Center wrote:
I’ve ordered books with donation checks to free services. At first they
denied them in May due to “No free books.” I fought that and paid a
donation. Then their excuse was “wrong order month.” They proceeded to
deny (in March, July, November) the free book services with donation
payments. Then I sent $400 to a bona fide vendor on the precise month of
orders. Now they’re saying we can’t have books in Ad-Seg and that I have
to send them home and my people won’t be able to send them back to me
once I’m out of seg (if I ever get out).
They’re making up arbitrary rules on the premise of punishment and
denying educational and recreational books to long-term segregation
people.
I had the check approved per the Functioning Unit Manager, and
approved with Business Office. Now I’m unable to get them cuz property
denied them.
I’m on hunger strike now at 7 days, 21 meals. No medical has
attempted to assess me, they’re denying legal access (property
paperwork) and staff don’t do rounds. If possible, I need assistance
with legal. I’m filing on medical for neglect/deliberate indifference.
I’m working on the §1983 in the mail but if ya’ll can help or put me
into contact or on a list of pro bono/after win lawyers it would be much
appreciated.
Another Jefferson City prisoner wrote: This prison
policy infringes on my right to receive free religious material, which
is considered “special mail, and can never be censored.” Prison
officials took the regular mail, now books, magazines, and newspapers
that were free, saying that drugs are coming in through the mail! That
is the worst lie I have ever heard. It is a fact that drugs are being
brought in by the prison staff themselves, not the other way around. I
am here to help fight this injustice, let me know what you need me to
do.
MIM(Prisons) adds: Unfortunately, now that this new
policy is already in place we will need a concerted campaign and likely
a lawsuit to reverse course. As the comrade above says, if any lawyers
want to get involved, we can help facilitate. It’s hard to give Missouri
a grade until we get a clearer picture of how this new policy plays out,
but we might have to give them an F.
MIM Distributors has been targetted in Pendleton Correctional
Facility in Indiana for promoting “Security Threat Group” information,
usually with no justification. Sometimes they will also add “New
Afrika”, as if the whole nation of New Afrika is a Security Threat
Group. This has been used to censor our newsletter and communications
with prisoners at Pendleton. More recently, staff have accused MIM
Distributors of lacing mail with drugs and threatened to throw the
intended recipients of that mail in long-term isolation torture cells as
a result! The charge against at least one prisoner has been dropped, but
the political repression continues.
Comrades in Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support have taken up a
campaign to get Pendleton staff to follow their own rules and stop this
baseless persecution. You can see in our Amerikan
Censorship Documentation Project that we have been appealing the
censorship for the last couple years with little progress. Therefore we
are expanding this campaign to build public opinion in support. You can
help by using these postcards to talk to people about what is going on
in Pendleton and getting them to send a postcard of protest to let the
Indiana Department of Corrections know that people are not okay with
their political persecution tactics.
download PDF above
print 2-sided on cardstock
cut into 4
add $0.56 stamp (or more)
go to event or public space and ask people to sign their name, city
and state
hand them a flyer or Under Lock & Key
ask for a donation to pay for postage & printing
drop postcards in mail box (don’t mail them all at once we want a
consistent stream of cards coming in)
All of our readers who operate within the hideous belly of the beast
that is the United $nakes prison system know about this system’s cruel
and unrelenting oppression in every facet of daily life. This article
serves to highlight and expose the asinine nature of one particular
aspect of this oppression that is particularly relevant to our work:
censorship. Every time we send out a document, book, or newspaper, there
is always the risk that whatever pig is working in the mail room on the
day it arrives will arbitrarily opt to censor it for any number of
made-up reasons. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, this behavior has
the backing of the U.$. court system which has granted the prison
bureaucrats almost total control over deciding what comes into prisons.
Like every other instrument of control wielded by the state, the pigs
use this power to repress the masses of the oppressed groups, especially
if this repression targets political content that challenges the status
quo.
However, there are still victories to be won in appealing these cases
of censorship, which comrades in Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support
(AIPS) are striving to do for every incident that comes to our
attention. With this in mind, we hope to start publishing these
censorship reports as a way to communicate to you, our readers, our
efforts in combating censorship as well as to showcase particularly
pathetic attempts by the pigs to censor our mail.
North Carolina’s Brazen
Hypocrisy
In ULK 84, we included a piece of art sent in by a
subscriber of ours which depicted a pig officer beating a prisoner with
a baton. This was apparently too far for the North Carolina Division of
Prisons (NCDOP) who said that they don’t allow “depictions of violence”
and that this image “may encourage a group disruption.” We simply had to
scoff when we read this in light of the fact that the NCDOP specifically
lays out guidelines on when it is “appropriate” to beat prisoners with
“impact weapons” like the baton depicted in the art. To the pigs, it’s
fine to physically abuse and maim prisoners. But showing them a cartoon
of such acts? That’s where they draw the line.
MIM(Prisons):
Political Organization or Tattoo Artists?
MIM Distributors recently sent a copy of the Fundamental
Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons
(FPL) (which we recommend to all our readers who wish to get a
deeper understanding of our organization’s politics) to a comrade
serving time in the heinous Florida Department of Corrections. Usually
the FPL gets through to prisoners fine, so we were a bit
surprised to receive a censorship notice in this case. This
unfortunately means that FPL is now on the Florida ban list,
preventing any Florida prisoners from doing our intro study course (they
were already prevented
from doing our 12 Step Program). And the official reason listed for
this censorship? That the FPL contained an image “large and
distinctive enough to be used as a tattoo pattern.” This was truly a new
one for this author (though our records show it’s been done before).
Apparently, sending any sort of art can justify censorship if some pig
decides the art might make a good tattoo! The silver lining to this
abuse of power is that it provides the perfect example of how the pigs
will use any justification to achieve their goals of repressing the
masses.
Indiana Finds “Drugs” in Our
Letters
The third and final case of censorship we’ll discuss is more aptly
described as a crusade against one of our comrades in Indiana. Nearly
every issue of ULK or any other mail we send to this comrade is
censored for some inane reason usually relating to our alleged promotion
of “Security Threat Groups.” We think it’s more likely that the state
has it out for our comrade though, seeing as ey are currently filing a
lawsuit against one of the pigs at the Indiana Department of
Corrections. Recently though, the mail room at the facility this comrade
is imprisoned in decided that MIM(Prisons) had laced one of their
letters with drugs. Not only this, they threatened the comrade with a
year in lock up and to take away all of eir legal work. After sending
our letter off to the lab it turns out that the “drugs” were simply some
ink that got smeared. When the oppressed simply try to survive, the pigs
will resort to beatings, administrative punishments, and acts of
sabotage. But when the pigs are caught actively lying to facilitate such
cruel acts, the oppressed get nothing, not even an apology.
In spite of this brutal repression, our comrade in Indiana is
continuing on with eir lawsuit in an attempt to expose and hold
accountable the pigs who think they can just violate the rights of
prisoners without a second thought. If you’d like to read more about our
campaign to support this prisoner as well as ways you can help, look to
our campaign linked below (or p. 16 of ULK).
