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| California Bans Pornography in Prisons |
| By Los Angeles Times |
| Published: 09/30/2002 |
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California prison officials have banned convicts from receiving pornographic magazines and all snapshots, drawings or other depictions of frontal nudity. The ban, which excludes prison-approved artistic and educational material, followed complaints from female officers who found the materials offensive. Prison authorities said some inmates have harassed female officers with suggestive comments or by masturbating in front of them. Nude pictures, officials said, fuel that behavior. 'This is not a question of the inmates enjoying a little private time in their cells. They are doing it to make the officers angry,' said Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections. 'This is creating a hostile work environment for our female staff.' Inmate advocates and civil libertarians call the response an over-reaction and a violation of inmates' 1st Amendment rights. They say the department could simply punish prisoners who misbehave or outlaw the display of sexually explicit material. 'This is like banning 'Catcher in the Rye' because it might induce a prisoner to say something disrespectful,' said David Fathi, a staff attorney with the ACLU's National Prison Project in Washington. The ban is the latest move by California's penal system to whittle away prisoner privileges gained under the so-called Inmates Bill of Rights, signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1968 and expanded by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1974. That statute said prisoners retained all rights except those that had to be denied to protect prison security and public safety. |
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