Our legal director, Zach Heiden, was in Augusta today to respond to proposed rules from the Department of Corrections that would ban several First Amendment-protected activities, such as writing to a pen pal. We are urging the Department to withdraw the proposed rules, or to substantially modify them before putting them into effect.
As we said in our comments, the proposed rules are not only unconstitutional, they are bad policy:
These new disciplinary rules will have a negative effect on the ability of prisoners to communicate and interact with the world outside of prison. The rules will prevent prisoners from establishing new relationships or strengthening existing relationships, and they will undermine prisoner’s ability to access information and to access the justice system. Taken together, these rules will damage the rehabilitative mission of the Department of Corrections. Almost every Maine prisoner will someday be released from prison, and the sorts of people they are when they are released is dependent on how they are treated when they are in prison. Strengthening ties to the community is the number one way to prevent prisoners from reoffending, yet these rules will weaken ties between prisoners and the community.
The full text of the comments can be found here.
