Print in Prison
Memo from the Editor Print in Prison For as long as anyone here at The Progressive can remember, we've sent the magazine free to every prisoner who requests it. We mail it every month, of course,...
...Once in a while, I even receive an official explanation of why The Progressive is "undeliverable...
...Supreme Court ruled that prison authorities may bar publications under regulations that are "reasonably related" to the maintenance of order and security...
...Others, however, take it upon themselves to decide what reading matter is and is not good for their inmates or their institutions...
...Some prison authorities deliver The Progressive to the intended recipient without a hitch...
...At one time or another, I've had to enlist the help of the U.S...
...In a few instances, it has taken many months of increasingly confrontational correspondence, culminating in the threat of a law suit, to affirm a prisoner's right to receive and read The Progressive...
...But we also send it to persons incarcerated on a broad range of "nonpolitical" felony charges and misdemeanors...
...Only a few dozen prisoners in this country (and a handful abroad) avail themselves of the opportunity to receive The Progressive free...
...I know from The Progressive's own experience with prisoner subscriptions how eager many wardens are to seize on any pretext to bar a publication they don't like...
...How many prisoners would have been prevented from receiving our May issue, with its package of articles detailing prison abuses, if it had gone into the mail after the Supreme Court decision...
...In other words, prisoners whose native language is Spanish may receive Spanish-language as well as English-language publications...
...Iowa prison authorities assert that inmates may not receive reading matter in any language but English and their "primary" tongue...
...An inmate at that institution, Mark Curtis, has recently been denied permission to receive Perspectiva Mundial, a Spanish-language socialist monthly published in New York, as well as Lutte ouvriere, a French monthly...
...In a deplorably regressive decision handed down on May 14, the U.S...
...The trouble with that line of reasoning, of course, is that given "broad discretion," most officials will abuse it...
...What is burdensome is the amount of time and effort we must sometimes expend to make sure the magazine reaches the prisoner to whom it is addressed...
...In other cases, we assume the cost ourselves...
...How many wardens would have argued that our articles would "undermine discipline" and therefore threaten security...
...We mail it every month, of course, to such good friends as Sam Day and Bonnie Urfer who are serving time in Federal penitentiaries for the actions they took to protest the nuclear arms race...
...In the volatile prison environment," wrote Justice Harry A. Blackmun for the six-member majority, "it is essential that prison officials be given broad discretion to prevent...
...Some of their subscriptions are subsidized by readers who earmark their contributions to the magazine for this purpose...
...More often, I get a plaintive note from a prisoner who wonders what ever happened to the subscription we promised to enter...
...It isn't fashionable these days to express concern about the rights of "criminals...
...Security," of course...
...One Wisconsin state prison, for example, barred the November 1979 issue, containing Howard Morland's "The H-Bomb Secret," because it presented "a reasonably probable hazard to peace, order, and safety of the institution...
...All we ask in return is that they do their best to share the magazine with other inmates...
...It's no great financial burden...
...But those of us who remain outside the walls would do well to remember that when anyone's rights are diminished, everyone's rights are placed in jeopardy...
...The three Supreme Court justices who dissented against the May 14 decision said the Court majority was engaged "in a headlong rush to strip inmates of all but a vestige of free communication with the world beyond the prison gate...
...So far, however, every one of these disputes has ultimately been resolved in favor of a prisoner's right to read...
...Occasionally, a magazine that has been requested by a prisoner is returned, marked refused...
...Postal Service's inspectors, the American Civil Liberties Union, and even governors and legislators, to persuade prison officials to suspend their abiding faith in censorship...
...Curtis, whose native language is English, may receive material only in that language...
...But whether that will continue to be the case is by no means certain...
...Officials at the Iowa State Men's Reformatory in Anamosa provide an apt illustration of the arbitrary and capricious "rules" to which prisoners are subjected...
...disorders...
Vol. 53 • July 1989 • No. 7
