From the Editor
by Paul Wright
The ongoing effort to censor, control and surveil prisoners’ access to information is the topic of this month’s cover story. It is also providing a convenient means to deprive prisoners of access to most information and publications—especially anything that is related to minorities, whether political, religious, racial, etc.
The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the publisher of Prison Legal News, has been in the forefront of challenging these censorship trends. As this issue goes to press, we have obtained preliminary injunctions mandating the delivery of publications by prison systems in Hawaii and New Mexico and the Bernalillo jail in New Mexico as well. We will report the details in an upcoming issue of PLN as they came down too late to include in this issue.
If you are a prisoner subscriber and the facility you are at is banning books and magazines, please let us know. Especially if they are banning publications from HRDC. Please check your address label to see how many issues you have remaining on your subscription and renew when you have two or three issues remaining to avoid missing any.
In addition to bans on publications, a number of prisons and jails are resorting to so called “approved vendor” lists to control and limit the publisher’s prisoners can receive publications from. HRDC has successfully challenged these approved vendor schemes about 9 times around the country over the years. If you are a prisoner in a facility using one of these “approved vendor” plans to limit access to HRDC publications, please let us know so we can take the appropriate action.
The last several issues of PLN have focused on mail digitization as it is a critical issue for both how prisoners receive and access information as well as for publishers like HRDC who communicate with prisoners. We will continue to report developments and challenges to these practices.
I mentioned in last month’s editorial that I was awaiting open heart surgery for a blocked artery. The surgery took place on January 30 and everything went well. I was in the ICU for a week after the surgery before coming home. The surgery itself is a major procedure and having your sternum cut open with a table saw is no joke. I was fortunate to have excellent doctors, nurses and a great hospital. I am duly recovering and getting my strength back and hope to be back to normal in another month or two.
The most sobering part of the experience is I had a 100% blockage of my left artery but no symptoms that anything was wrong. This type of blockage leads to “widow maker” heart attacks which have a 90% fatality rate. The Catch-22 is I was not given the tests that might have detected it sooner because I didn’t have any symptoms of anything, which apparently is pretty common. I was lucky in that when something felt off I went to the doctor who immediately sent me to a cardiologist who scheduled the test and diagnosed the problem. I should be around for the foreseeable future.
Enjoy this issue of PLN and please encourage others to subscribe.
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