Posted on Thu, Jul. 03, 2003 
 
 

Judge: State Inmates Should Get Bulk Mail
 

Associated Press

SEATTLE - State prison inmates should be allowed to receive bulk mailings and catalogs, a federal judge has ruled in a First Amendment case brought by a newspaper specializing in prisoner rights.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik overturned a long-standing ban by the Washington state Department of Corrections.

Eldon Vail, Corrections Department deputy secretary, said the ruling could increase opportunities for contraband and tie up staff with extra work.

In a November 2001 lawsuit, the Prison Legal News said the agency was violating the paper's right to distribute political speech. Mailroom workers at prisons, the suit said, were tossing out subscription renewal postcards, book order forms and other notices often mailed to the paper's readers at bulk rates.

Lawyer Jesse Wing argued that while the actual paper was not being censored, the ban on bulk mailings could result in censorship if the recipients didn't get supplementary materials, or didn't know when to renew subscriptions.

Inmates also weren't receiving notices from financial and religious organizations and political mail from Amnesty International or the Democratic and Republican parties, according to the suit.

The judge's order, issued June 17, does not affect the department's authority to censor material that contains pornography or hate speech, or is about crime.

The Prison Legal News is a Seattle-based nonprofit monthly covering issues of prisoner rights and court rulings, according to its Web site. It is edited by an inmate at the Monroe Correctional Complex prisoner rights and is distributed to about 3,000 subscribers, including prisoners, lawyers, judges, academics and prison rights activists.

ON THE NET

 http://www.prisonlegalnews.org/

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