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| State Prisons Institute New Censorship Rules |
| By eastbayexpress.com- Toshio Meronek |
| Published: 06/18/2014 |
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Last year, about 30,000 inmates staged a hunger strike in California prisons to protest subpar living conditions and the use of long-term solitary confinement. In response, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is implementing new censorship regulations that prisoners and prisoners' rights groups say are overly broad and meant as retribution for political organizing. Carol Strickman, a longtime staff attorney with the prisoners' rights group Legal Services for Prisoners with Children in San Francisco, said the new regulations may also violate the First Amendment, adding that they are so broad, they could mean prisoners wouldn't be allowed to "write about anything in their life [or] receive anything about anyone in their life, or about themselves." CDCR spokesperson Dana Simas said the new regulations were designed to improve clarity about what materials should be considered contraband and which constitute threats to prison security. But one inmate, whose name was withheld by the Bay Area-based Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity (PHSS) group for fear of retaliation, told PHSS that he and other prisoners maintain that CDCR leaders "seek to not only halt all criticism, but also the education and political development of underclass segments of their population — particularly those who are imprisoned .... They seek to control all we read, see, learn or think." In a written statement, PHSS stated that the regulations would serve "to censor writings that educate the public about what is actually occurring inside the prisons," and that even mainstream publications that publish pieces concerning prison issues, such as The New York Times, could end up on what will, under the new regulations, be known as the Centralized List of Disapproved Publications. Read More. |
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