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| Media access denied at NJ state prisons |
| By Star-Ledger |
| Published: 06/14/2006 |
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TRENTON, NJ - The New Jersey DOC has instituted one of the nation's tightest restrictions on media access to state prisons, including a complete ban on interviews with inmates. George Hayman, the acting corrections commissioner, issued the ban after taking office in January and plans to keep the restrictions in place as long as he is in his current status, said Matthew Schuman, a spokesman for the department. Schuman said department regulations give corrections officials discretion in granting interviews and Hayman was using that authority to issue a blanket prohibition. He said the new policy was based on security concerns. "The press still has the option of writing to inmates if they have questions," Schuman said. For decades, the jailhouse interview has been a staple of American journalism, the fodder for books like "In Cold Blood" and "The Executioner's Song" and movies like "The Thin Blue Line." Inmates have long used such interviews to protest their innocence, decry prison conditions or just tell their life stories, not always a welcome prospect for law enforcement officials and victims of crime. In interviews, press organizations, inmate advocates, constitutional lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union condemned the new policy, saying it represented an erosion of the public's right to know what is going on inside a public institution. "The Department of Corrections is a public institution funded by tax dollars," said Edward Martone, director of education and policy for the Association on Correction, a non-profit advocacy group. "The public has a right to know how its money is being spent." John O'Brien, executive director of the New Jersey Press Association, said not only the general public but policymakers themselves can benefit from information elicited by interviews with prisoners. He said he would initiate contact with state officials in an effort to have the new policy overturned. "I can't imagine what they hope to accomplish by the institution of this policy," he said. Three U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s, including Saxbe vs. Washington Post Co. and Pell vs. Procunier, found that the press had no First Amendment right to interview inmates and that corrections officials were free to use their discretion in granting access. Charles Davis, a University of Missouri School of Journalism professor who has studied the issue for the Society of Professional Journalists, said most states have preserved some form of media access to the prisons despite the rulings. But he said there has been a trend over the last decade toward more restrictions on inmate interviews. A number of states had banned cameras or any sound or video recordings, he said. Others have prohibited phone interviews, he said, or required that a reporter see an inmate only by being placed on a visitation list with friends and relatives. California is one of the few states that have banned one-on-one interviews outright, said Peter Sussman, an author and freelance journalist who has written extensively on media access to prisons. Davis and Sussman said New Jersey's restrictions may be the most stringent in the nation. Not only can reporters not be granted arranged interviews with inmates; they also cannot receive collect calls and cannot be put on inmates' visitation lists, according to Schuman. Schuman said reporters can visit personal friends or relatives in prison, but if they are found to be carrying a notebook or acting in their capacity as journalists, they will be barred. He said the restrictions were put in place for security reasons. He could not describe any specific security incident that arose from a press interview, but he said the department cannot afford staffing needed to make sure a journalist is safe. "Anything can happen in a prison," he said. Edward Barocas, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, said he was especially bothered by reporters' inability to be put on visitation lists, which he said gives them fewer rights than ordinary citizens. "Such a practice would appear to violate freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which are crucial to ensuring government accountability," he said. "When journalists are not allowed into a prison, you have to wonder what could be covered up and why." As examples of other states that have limited press access to their prisons, Schuman cited New York and Pennsylvania. But spokeswomen for corrections departments in both states said they continue to allow inmate interviews. |
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