by Paul Wright

The month before Prison Legal News published its first issue in May 1990, the Washington legislature became the first to enact civil commitment and sex offender registration in response to a series of horrific sex crimes by repeat offenders. We have been reporting on the issue literally from our first day of existence. At the time, the Human Rights Defense Center, was quite literally the only organization opposed to these laws and we lost some support because of our opposition. Thirty-five years later all of our concerns have been proven correct and it remains a bad policy and a bad law. Today, dozens of states imprison sex offenders after they have served their criminal sentences and all 50 states have enacted varying degrees of sex offender registration. We have reported on how sex offender registration creates crime out of whole clothe and acts as a driver of mass incarceration.

Over 35 years after Washington created civil commitment, its fraudulent premise of somehow being about rehabilitation and treatment remains fairly plain, with many states having never released a single person who was civilly committed.  Rather than end the practice as a failed experiment, they continue to lurch along albeit with diminished new commitments. Most discussions about prisons, jails and mass incarceration ignore civil commitment as a component, perhaps due to the overall small numbers in the bigger context of millions of prisoners in state, federal and local facilities.

The concept of imprisoning people for the crimes they may commit in the future had previously been confined to science fiction and fantasy novels. Civil commitment has been premised on caging sex offenders ostensibly to provide treatment to prevent future crimes yet has merely been a strategy of prolonged incapacitation. If rehabilitation was a goal, it is noteworthy that sex offender treatment is not provided while people are serving their criminal sentences.

Coming into 2026, mail digitization continues to be the latest fad and as part of it, prisons and jails are using it as an excuse to ban all publications. As this issue of PLN goes to press, we have sued the Minnesota DOC over its “approved vendor” list which has been used to censor our publications. If you are in a prison or jail that bans publications, please write and let us know as prison and jail officials are rarely notifying us.

We remain committed to challenging prison and jail censorship around the country, especially as it pertains to blanket book and magazine bans. That said we have limited resources and are prioritizing those places where we have strong legal teams to work with already. Please keep us posted of what is happening in your facility. We currently have suits challenging these blanket publication bans in Hawaii, New Mexico and Missouri as well as jails in New Mexico, Washington and Texas.

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