Prisons in New York state have used an opaque, vaguely defined process to ban hundreds of books and other texts, according to documents MuckRock obtained through open records requests.

Between February and July last year, about 1,800 books, magazines and newspapers were mailed to people incarcerated in New York’s 44 prisons. The reviewing committees there blocked portions of more than 300 texts, including newspaper articles, academic texts and legal publications.

Despite their significant role in controlling access to information, these committees operate largely in secrecy and their decisions are shielded from public scrutiny. New York has never made records of individual facility bans publicly available.

MuckRock obtained hundreds of pages of records through the Freedom of Information Law, but the data is imperfect and incomplete: In 2023, MuckRock also filed requests for individual notices of every facility — almost a year later, New York has provided around 2,400 pages of responsive records while claiming that a “diligent search” is still being conducted for additional responsive records.

“It is department policy to encourage incarcerated individuals to read publications from varied sources providing such material does not encourage them to engage in behavior that might be disruptive to orderly facility operations,” a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) wrote in a lengthy email to MuckRock.

“The Department does not ban any publication,” the spokesperson said, noting that it “rather finds contents within the printed publications to pose a threat to the facilities; such as specific words, pictures and context.”

But state regulations for banning books sent to prisons are open-ended in many ways, meaning a small number of people are responsible for reviewing and seemingly arbitrarily deciding whether texts should be allowed — something First Amendment and prisoners rights advocates say is a dangerous threat to incarcerated people.

“The Supreme Court has said that prisoners do not give up all their rights when they are incarcerated,” said Kevin Golberg, a First Amendment Specialist at the Freedom Forum, an organization dedicated to protecting the First Amendment. “The First Amendment doesn’t need to justify itself. The government needs to justify its decision to limit the First Amendment.”

One text at a time

Every piece of media sent to an individual incarcerated in New York is first reviewed by the facility’s media review committee. If a prison employee sees a piece of media they think should be banned, they can ask the committee for a second review. (There are separate policies that govern which texts are allowed in prison libraries, which incarcerated people can access “at least once per week” assuming they have not faced specific disciplinary charges.)

The state’s Media Review Directive offers vague guidelines on how committees should conduct their reviews. Strict standards, such as prohibition on CDs, govern the physical matter; in terms of content, they must carry “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” when examined as a whole. Beyond that, decisions are largely left up to the prison employees on the committees, which include correctional officers, resource program leaders, librarians, chaplains, office assistants and sergeants.

Employees are not given any additional compensation for working on a committee. They receive annual training and are reviewed by the Department’s Regional Recreation Program Leaders, an internal oversight group, every year.

The Media Review Directive doesn’t specify how many people must be on a review committee. Many committees have three or four members, while others have one or two.

At Greene Correctional Facility in Coxsackie, for example, Jason Milo, a resource program leader, is the only committee member and therefore the sole person deciding what media are appropriate for the people incarcerated inside. Milo assessed texts weekly between February and July 2023, and did not ban any of the 104 items he reviewed, according to his monthly report to DOCCS.

Committees are also not obligated to meet every month — in 60 instances, media review committees reported that they had no texts to review that month.

If a committee decides to ban a specific text, members are required to issue a notice to whoever sent it and let them know why the text, or a portion of it, won’t be permitted. At the end of every month, the committee must also provide DOCCS with a report indicating the dates of specific committee meetings, the number of texts reviewed and the titles of texts that were banned in whole or in part. Committees must file a report even if they review no texts or hold no meetings.

In many other facilities, however, newly obtained records reveal that bans are sporadic and inconsistent. For example, while dozens of texts were censored at the Collins and Riverview correctional facilities over this five-month period, not a single text was banned in nine other facilities throughout the state. Experts argue this is a reflection both of inconsistent media review policies and of differences in the number of texts sent to a specific facility in a specific month.

One facility that blocked large volumes of media was the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. These records show that Clinton banned tens of pages of academic texts, such as 17 pages in a textbook about the history of prisons that allegedly had the potential to “promote” gang formation and 12 pages in an academic book about hate iconography that might “encourage prurient interests.”

In response to questions about specific texts, a spokesperson for DOCCS wrote: “There are guidelines regarding publications writing about violence and rebellion. Additionally, DOCCS does not differentiate between fiction and nonfiction when considering the depiction of violence.”

In other instances, seemingly innocuous texts were routinely turned away. At Clinton, pages 4 through 232 of a horoscope and dream interpretation text called the “Success Dream Book” were banned because they allegedly contained portions written “in code.” At the Wyoming Correctional Facility in Attica, the committee blocked an entire pamphlet about the Wyoming County 19th-century Underground Railroad.

In other facilities, books by incarcerated authors were censored. At the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, for example, some portion of a fiction book by Anthony Fields, a man incarcerated at a federal penitentiary in Victorville, California, was censored by the facility’s senior librarian through the media review committee. Another text, “The Prison Manual,” a “complete guide to surviving the American prison system” by Mike Enemigo, was censored by the committee at Wyoming. (Records describing the specific rationales for censoring both books have not been disclosed.)

The monthly reports also show that journalism also routinely faces censorship, with portions of texts withheld. Six unidentified pages from the book “The Press in Prison” were blocked at the Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch; specific editions of The Post-Journal, the New York Post, USA Today, the Courier-Observer and even Music Industry Long Island were also censored across the state.

MuckRock emailed the chairpeople of all 44 committees for comment. Every chairperson either did not respond or declined to comment.

Bans based on content

In a landmark 1987 Supreme Court case, Turner v. Safley, that considered restrictions on correspondence between inmates, prison officials were given vast powers to institute regulations that might otherwise violate prisoners’ rights — to challenge a regulation, prisoners must demonstrate that a regulation holds no “legitimate penological interests.”

Critics contend that strict content-based bans on media, especially when seemingly inconsistently applied like in New York, infringe on prisoners’ inherent rights, even if it might not meet the Turner standard.

“So many prison employees use their power to impose their moral views on captive populations,” said Paul Wright, the editor of Prison Legal News, a publication that covers news and litigation pertaining to prisons around the U.S. “When you look at these lists, some themes come through. Anything that’s critical of the government or the police state is banned.”

Seven pages from the March 2023 issue of Prison Legal News were censored at the Upstate Correctional Facility. Wright said that though New York State policy requires the senders of texts to be notified, he was not aware that any portion of the March edition he published and sent was banned. (Incarcerated people are also notified of texts that they would otherwise have received.)

Over a decade ago, Wright sued New York State over his publication being censored, eventually forcing the state to permit Prison Legal News in all prisons. Wright was concerned by the banning of one issue in one facility, but he explained that this was not enough to launch another lawsuit.

“We have to prioritize our litigation,” Wright said. “One mail clerk does something stupid and the entire bureaucratic system of the state falls in line behind them.”

“In regards to publications that publish multiple editions; each edition is reviewed separately and although one edition was previously approved, does not mean the contents of another edition will be,” a DOCCS spokesperson wrote. “No publication is banned, just that specific contents are disallowed.”

In 2022, Betsy Ginsberg, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law, represented Heather Ann Thompson, the author of a book about the 1971 Attica uprising — during which more than 1,000 prisoners took control of their prison — as she challenged banning of her book across the state. The state was eventually forced to issue guidance permitting the book in every prison.

“The book was being consistently denied,” Ginsberg said, explaining that one facility took issue with depictions of “deceased inmates and employees” and another with descriptions of escape. “But it was being denied for different reasons at different facilities.” (The Department wrote that the book is now “approved for reading and is available in paperback in the General Libraries in DOCCS correctional facilities. The map of Attica Correctional Facility is removed.”)

The state’s policies allow people who are incarcerated to challenge the banning of a text sent to them, via an appeal to the Central Office Media Review Committee in Albany. Though a challenge can be made by checking a box on an individual media ban notice, Ginsberg said that a valid legal argument is usually needed to overturn a media committee’s decision.

Through her litigation, Ginsberg obtained lists of thousands of successful appeals. She explained that these records show that specific topics — books about race, for example — are more likely to be banned and overturned. (The Department referred MuckRock to data indicating that less than 0.1% of all grievance complaints filed by incarcerated individuals were media review appeals. They did not answer specific questions about media appeals.)

Ginsberg noted that her data does not indicate how many appeals are unsuccessful, and how many banned books are never appealed.

“I don’t know how you solve the problem of one facility denying for one reason and another facility denying for another,” she said. “I don’t know what percentage of texts get appealed and what percentage are just banned.”