COLUMBIA -- Attorneys say a prison news magazine is being unconstitutionally banned from an S.C. jail, and they told a judge Tuesday that jail officials have changed their policies numerous times to keep the magazine out of inmates' hands - starting with a claim that inmates are allowed to read nothing but the Bible.
"There have been all sorts of restrictions invented as a reason for banning Prison Legal News," said David Shapiro, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. During a hearing in Columbia, he added that Berkeley County's policies initially banned all publications that weren't the Bible but now stress prohibitions on publications with any nudity or staples. "The policies are entirely standard-less," he said.
Shapiro is one of the lead attorneys on a lawsuit filed in October against the facility in Moncks Corner, about 100 miles southeast of Columbia. The ACLU says the jail violates constitutional rights of publishers and inmates by not allowing inmates to receive Prison Legal News, a monthly legal journal by the Human Rights Defense Center. The civil liberties group now wants a federal judge to rule that inmates should be allowed to receive the publication while the lawsuit over the jail's mail policies moves forward.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Seymour said Tuesday she would rule on that request later. The groups' lawsuit challenging the jail policy is scheduled for trial in January.
Since 2008, publishers of Prison Legal News say they have tried to send magazines, letters and self-help books about prison life to several inmates at the Berkeley County jail, but copies were returned after jail officials said staples inside posed a security risk - and that Bibles were the only reading material allowed to inmates.
"Our inmates are only allowed to receive soft-back Bibles in the mail directly from the publisher," 1st Sgt. K. Habersham wrote in a July 2010 email to publishers. "They are not allowed to have magazines, newspapers, or any other type of books."
When the lawsuit was filed, jail officials then told The Associated Press the jail didn't have a library and that the roughly 450 inmates were allowed to have no reading material other than paperback Bibles.
But an attorney for the jail now says inmates have regularly been allowed to receive non-Christian religious writings - including vampire and witchcraft texts - and that jail officials have long interpreted "bible" to mean any religious book, like a Koran.
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