National inmate magazine claims censorship at Arizona prisons

PHOENIX — A national monthly magazine for and about prison inmates is accusing the state Department of Corrections of censorship.

The lawsuit filed in federal court contends top agency officials purposely and illegally withheld copies of Prison Legal News from inmates who subscribe. And even in situations where the magazine eventually was delivered, portions had been redacted.

Attorney Lisa Ells acknowledged the state prison system has various regulations dealing with what kinds of material is off limits to inmates.

That includes pictures and text that “may encourage unacceptable sexual or hostile behaviors.” Also forbidden are policies with “sexually explicit material.”

But Ells said what agency chief Charles Ryan and his staff are censoring are factual stories about inmates being raped or abused by prison guards and staffers. That includes one incident in Arizona that wound up in federal court.

Department of Correction staffers are effectively blocking delivery of publications “that describe sexual acts in a non-salacious way as part of an article reporting on the facts of a court case or published legal decision,” she said. And that, Ells argued, violates not only the rights of inmates to the information but the rights of the magazine to distribute it.

Ells said what makes the agency’s actions unusual is that the same information is readily available to inmates.

“The issues contained articles that had textual descriptions only, no photographs, no pictures, of either pending lawsuits or court opinions that the inmates could get from their law library about cases that involve non-consensual sex in incarcerated areas,” she said. Ells said federal appeals courts have ruled that kind of legal information, presented in a “non-salacious” manner, “is core First Amendment speech.”

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She also contends the state may be targeting Prison Legal News because it informs inmates of their rights.

“PLN publishes and distributes content concerning the rights of prisons and the means by which they may obtain relief from unconstitutional conditions of confinement,” Ells wrote in her pleadings.

She said her client believes Ryan and his staff “have retaliated against PLN” by refusing to deliver the papers.

Ells is asking a federal judge to declare that the actions of the Department of Corrections are unconstitutional and bar the agency from engaging in similar conduct in the future. Her lawsuit also seeks unspecified punitive damages.

There was no immediate response from the agency.

According to the lawsuit, Prison Legal News is distributed to prisoners and law librarians in about 2,600 federal and state institutions. It has 97 subscribers to its monthly publication at Arizona state facilities.

Ells said the problems started last year when the department would not deliver the March, April, July and October issues. She said the agency never returned the items or even told Prison Legal News of the action, with the paper finding out about the censored issues from subscribers.

And Ells said there is no formal process for the magazine to appeal such decisions.