Inmate mail censorship case settled
A lawsuit, alleging censorship of inmate mail by the Upshur County Jail, has been settled in the plaintiffs favor.
Prison Legal News settled the lawsuit for $175,000.
Named as defendants in the suit, which was filed in October, 2012, were the county, Sheriff Anthony Betterton and Sheriffs Lt. Jill McCauley.
The suit stated that Upshur County Jails inmate handbook contained no written criteria explaining when a publication will be rejected, and the jails mail policy did not provide a sender any notice or explanation when a book is censored, stated a story in the February, 2014, edition of Prison Legal News (PLN), reporting the settlement.
The story stated that PLN had mailed copies of its monthly magazine to prisoners at the Upshur County Jail, as well as letters, renewal notices, brochures and copies of a book, Protecting Your Health and Safety.
The article said that the jail rejected about 90 of PLNs publications over a one-year period, stamping them No Newspaper, Unauthorized Mail, Not Approved, or Refused.
The article said the jail also rejected legal mail sent to prisoners by PLNs attorney. No notice was provided regarding this censorship, and PLN was not afforded an opportunity to appeal the rejection of its publications.
Lance Weber, general counsel for the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the nonprofit parent of PLN was quoted in the article as saying The purpose of jail is to hold the criminally accused for trial, not to punish them. Depriving pretrial detainees too poor to afford bail, who are presumed innocentof access to information that could assist them in enforcing their rights is inexcusable.
The article reported that on Sept. 30, 2013, a federal district court granted PLNs motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that the withholding of at least some of the correspondence with prisoners deprived the plaintiff, PLN, of its First Amendment rights without due process of law.
While the jail had adopted a new mail policy before the granting of the preliminary injunction, and the court said that was a clear improvement, but that it still falls short of establishing the minimum procedural safeguards constitutionally required to protect PLNs First and Fourteenth Amendment rights without due process of law.
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Inmate mail censorship case settled