Months after standing trial in May 2014 for killing three people and leaving their bodies in a burning vehicle outside Bangor, Randall Daluz started his religious blog, The Journal of a New Creation. Because Daluz has no Internet access in the Penobscot County Jail, the wife of his spiritual adviser agreed to post his writings for him.
This exercise of free speech may not go against the jail’s rules. But when Daluz is transferred to the Maine State Prison in Warren following sentencing, his online postings may run afoul of a state Department of Corrections policy that prohibits inmates from publishing their writings under a byline.
His blog has garnered national attention and sparked debate about free speech in U.S. prisons and to what extent prisons can control prisoners’ First Amendment rights in the interest of security.
“Prisons are allowed to limit speech under very narrow circumstances,” Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center at the Newseum, told news website Fusion.net. “They generally have to show strong justification for limiting speech that has nothing to do with the speech itself, and they need to prove that it somehow has to do with the security within the prison.”
Recently, there have been several high-profile cases in which prison officials have cracked down on inmates’ use of social media to post their writings online. At the same time, Facebook has started to make it more difficult for prison officials to crack down on inmates’ use of the online social network.
“An investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that hundreds of South Carolina inmates were sent to solitary confinement for illicitly posting to Facebook from state facilities,” Daniel Rivero wrote this week on Fusion. “Separately, early this month, Facebook changed its policy about removing profiles that were reported to be administered ‘either by or on behalf of inmates.’ Rather, prison officials would have to prove a specific law or Facebook policy was being broken that would necessitate the takedown.”
Prisons routinely monitor incoming mail in an attempt stem the flow of contraband being smuggled into inmates. But corrections officials in Maine and several other jurisdictions are trying to restrict writings inmates post online because they may be used to plan escapes or foster discontent among prison populations — moves that risk violating prisoners’ constitutional rights. In 2007, a federal court in Colorado found prison policy similar to that of the Maine Department of Corrections prohibiting inmates from publishing under a byline to be unconstitutional by a federal court.
“Access to social media networks, if achieved by inmates themselves, can pose an issue to prison security specifically because it is both incoming and outgoing, says Paulson. ‘It could be a very effective way of planning an escape,’ he suggested. That’s why prisons have cracked down on cell phone usage across the country, as evidenced in a Fusion investigation released in February,” Rivero writes.
Rivero notes “prison writings form part of a vibrant American tradition, ranging from an a cappella song featured on a multi-platinum Outkast album, to Martin Luther King Jr.’s monumental ‘Letter From a Birmingham Jail’ — considered one of the seminal documents of the Civil Rights era.”
Read the entire article on Daluz’s blog and free speech in prisons on Fusion’s website.