19-e-1 General Standards for Receiving Publications

• Library: A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual (2020 Edition)

19-E-1. General Standards for Receiving Publications

Most courts, using the Turner standard, have upheld restrictions on receiving incoming publications. This is generally the case for restrictions that are reasonably related to the legitimate governmental interests of security, ¹⁴⁵ screening contraband, ¹⁴⁶ preventing fire, ¹⁴⁷ and promoting rehabilitation.¹⁴⁸ In Frost v. Symington, a federal appeals court upheld regulations withholding sexually explicit magazines from prisoners. ¹⁴⁹ In Malik v. Coughlin, ¹⁵⁰ a New York state court, citing Abbott, allowed prisons to censor an incoming article that made critical and exaggerated allegations concerning prison medical personnel. The censored article said that correctional facilities used prisoners as guinea pigs for drug testing.¹⁵¹ The court held the censorship did not violate the prisoner's right to free speech, even though the article was read at two other prisons.¹⁵² Withholding publications that contain racist statements has also been upheld by federal courts relying on Abbott. ¹⁵³ Prison officials can probably also ban internal prisoners' newsletters by claiming that they are contrary to prison security if the newsletters contain similar forbidden content. But, as one court held in Epps v. Smith, ¹⁵⁴ a prison cannot ban an outside prisoners' newsletter that does not contain prohibited content (in this case, a self-described "revolutionary prisoners' newspaper" published in California and distributed in a New York penitentiary). The court there emphasized the rights of those outside the prison to express their political views.¹⁵⁵

Sometimes courts will not allow publications to be banned if the government does not have an important reason to ban them. In one case, ¹⁵⁶ the court did not allow a regulation that only allowed prisoners to receive publications they ordered and paid for directly because the government did not have a strong enough reason for imposing the rule. In another case, ¹⁵⁷ the court found no rational relationship between the government interests of security and fire prevention, and a restriction that prohibited prisoners in administrative segregation (as opposed to in disciplinary segregation) from receiving any subscriptions. Similarly, in another case ¹⁵⁸ the court said that a restriction on publications that contained any nudity could be invalidated as too broad because the restriction included scientific texts and works of art.¹⁵⁹

A common restriction imposed by prisons is the "publishers-only" rule, which allows "inmates to receive newspapers, magazines, and books from publishers or book clubs only." ¹⁶⁰ The Supreme Court in Bell v. Wolfish¹⁶¹ held that if your prison adopts a publishers-only rule for hardcover books, you have no right to receive publications directly from friends or family, since the rule might be...