The Human Rights Defense Center is suing the Hawaiʻi Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for censorship.
The center says the department has not allowed its educational publications, books and informational brochures to be delivered to inmates.
The publications contain news involving detention facilities and include information for inmates about criminal law procedure and civil rights.
Center Executive Director Paul Right explained that the policy impacts other publications as well.
“The less people know about anything, the less likely they are to be able to vindicate their rights. It's hard to vindicate your rights if you don't know what your rights are,” he said.
“I think that's one of the trends that we're seeing is these total publication bans are being used to cut people off from any type of information that they can use to help themselves or to try to improve their conditions of confinement … Reading is such an integral part of Western society in general. I mean, this is how we transmit knowledge. This is how we inform ourselves. This is how we learn.”
Although the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has a process for receiving publications, it bans people from sending books and magazines to inmates.
The center says the grounds for rejection of materials are overly broad.
The Human Rights Defense Center has sent its magazines to inmates since the '90s. But starting a year ago, they say the materials have been sent back — marked by officials as unauthorized mail or censored.
It has successfully litigated similar cases in other states such as California and Washington.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation wrote in an email that it does not comment on pending litigation.
The center has motioned for a preliminary injunction. If it is granted by the judge, the written materials would be allowed back into DCR facilities while the litigation continues.
