From the Editor
As long as there have been prisons, the people who run them have endeavored to keep prisoners as ignorant, ill informed and cut off from the outside world as possible. At the same time, those in charge aim to ensure that all the bad news, the killings, rapes, corruption and brutality that occur in prisons, stays there. And that was the case for most of American history, until the early 1970s when federal courts began allowing prisoners to have access to mail and publications coming into prisons and to express themselves in their outgoing mail. The 1974 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision from California, Procunier v. Martinez, marked a seismic shift in prison censorship.
Ever since then, prisoners and publishers alike have been fighting for access to information and publications coming into prisons and information going out. The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), which publishes Prison Legal News, has been in the forefront of these censorship fights since its founding in 1990. For the last three and a half decades, we’ve filed and won dozens of censorship cases around the country. With the advent of mail digitization in recent years, prisons and jails are seeing the technology as a means to cut prisoners off from all incoming information not totally controlled by the government, which includes cutting off all books and magazines. The prison agencies then become the only source of a limited range of books and no magazines by selling these publications to prisoners at inflated prices; nearly all the books available on prison tablets consist of public domain titles over 75 years old. These titles are often lifted from Project Guttenberg, which offers thousands of eBooks for free on its website.
HRDC currently has statewide censorship lawsuits challenging these practices in Hawaii, New Mexico and Missouri, as well at several jails in New Mexico, Texas and Washington. We have not yet gotten any rulings on the merits yet. Even in states which are delivering our magazines and books, we are being impacted by the censorship of our subscription renewal notices and information packets telling prisoners how to subscribe. Please check your mailing label to see how many issues are remaining on your magazine subscription and renew your subscription at least three months before it expires to avoid missing any issues.
If you are a PLN subscriber and your magazine subscription or any books ordered from HRDC have been censored, please let us know as we usually not notified of the censorship.
In the 35 years I have been writing editorials for PLN, I have very rarely written about myself. As this issue goes to press, I am awaiting open heart surgery to replace an artery that is 100% blocked. I had not had much in the way of symptoms but thought it best to see my doctor, who immediately thought there was a problem and sent me to a cardiologist. I have been in the hospital for several days awaiting surgery, which will take place on January 30.
I have no idea how long the recovery period will be. I will be in the hospital for around a week and then recuperating at home. Hopefully, I am back in no time.
Enjoy this issue of PLN and please encourage others to subscribe and to support HRDC.
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login