From the Editor
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story explores the increasing use of tablets in prisons and jails around the country by the same prison telecom monopolies that have controlled the prison phone “market” for the past 35 years. PLN has been reporting on tablets for a number of years now, since they were first introduced and we are seeing their steady expansion.
As the article notes, tablets are being used as an excuse to limit and outright ban all physical mail including print books and magazines. The content of these tablets is a well-guarded secret as no one outside of prisons can say what is on them as far as news content goes. It is likely that nothing critical of the American police state or its corporate collaborators is anywhere to be found on prison and jail tablets.
The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the publisher of Prison Legal News, is currently suing the states of New Mexico and Missouri over their bans on physical mail, which includes all books and magazines. The publication bans are part of efforts to digitize mail. Conveniently this allows corporations to monetize any all communications prisoners have with the outside world and to control the content of all communications and expand the surveillance state to prisoners and those who communicate with them. It’s amazing how this all works out. Of course, prisoners in New Mexico and Missouri are not able to read this article or issue of PLN.
Mail digitization is merely the latest gimmick designed to financially exploit prisoners and further isolate them and control what they can read and the media they can consume. We will report developments as they occur.
In upcoming developments, we hope to publish updated editions of several books including Protecting Your Health and Safety as well as The Habeas Citebook: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel. As soon as the books go to the printer we will announce it and start taking advance orders.
One of the saddest duties I have as editor of PLN is noting our friends and allies who die. After 35 years it is starting to become a more frequent occurrence. Brady Williamson, 79, was a brilliant First Amendment lawyer at the Wisconsin law firm Godfrey Kahn for many years. During that time period he successfully represented HRDC in censorship cases against Wisconsin jails that were banning all publications, including ours.
Brady had a long career defending the First Amendment and the free speech rights of publishers in particular. Probably his best-known case was USA v. The Progressive, 467 F. Supp. 990 (WD WI 1979) where the Department of Energy sued The Progressive Magazine to prevent it from publishing an article on atomic bombs. Eventually the article was published after the government dropped its suit. Brady was instrumental in protecting both the free speech rights of people in Wisconsin as well as helping ensure Wisconsin has a robust public records law.
Brady will be sorely missed as a passionate and dedicated defender of the First Amendment and helping ensure it was vindicated in the lives of everyone, including prisoners and small publishers like HRDC. This issue of PLN is dedicated to his memory.
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