The Michigan Department of Corrections has blocked an inmate from receiving his copy of The Progressive, claiming that a story within its pages threatens prison security.
In a form letter sent to the offices of The Progressive in October, staff at the Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan identified an article written by freelance investigative reporter Beau Hodai as “a security threat.”
“PD 05.03118 Paragraph MM,” declared the form letter dated October 4, “prohibits prisoner from receiving mail that may pose a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the facility, may facilitate or encourage criminal activity, or may interfere with the rehabilitation of the prisoner.”
The form said the magazine was not delivered to a state prison inmate named William Morris pursuant to the state prison rule.
The referenced article, “Arizona’s Manufactured Terrorism Threat,” concerned several prosecutions of alleged terrorists that occurred “in the absence of any actual terrorist attack.” The story quotes a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union suggesting that federal authorities were taking advantage of “a lower threshold for the prosecution of terrorism-related crimes in Arizona.”
One of the cases featured in the article was that of Michelle and Thomas Bastian, indicted in October 2016 for allegedly plotting to detonate a bomb at a state prison complex. The article gave no details of how the alleged plot would have been conducted, however, and as the article states, “no overt acts were alleged to take place.”
The form from the Michigan Department of Corrections does not make specific reference to the Bastian case, but it is the only one mentioned in Hodai’s article that involved prisons.
Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the department, stated in an email response to The Progressive that the issue was rejected because the prison staff “felt it contained information on how an act of terrorism was handled by seeking weapons, explosive devices and identifying potential targets to commit a terrorist act, though not detailed this was the reason for rejection.”
Gautz said the “prisoner was given a copy of the rejection notice and the prisoner chose to have the mail destroyed on 10/11/17.”
Asked why the magazine’s June/July issue, sent to subscribers in early June, was rejected on October 4, four months later, Gautz replied, “There is no specific reason for the time frame of the rejection. The facilities process these as time and staffing permits.”
Gautz did not specifically answer the question, “Can you outline a scenario in which allowing inmate access to this article would present a security threat?”
The Progressive sends free one-year subscriptions of the magazine to any prison or jail inmate who requests it. Currently, the magazine has about 100 inmates who receive copies of the magazine. No other penal institution notified the magazine that this issue or this story was deemed too dangerous to distribute.
Matt Rothschild, the magazine’s longtime former editor, says he is aware of past occasions in which prison officials have blocked delivery of the magazine, which he calls “outrageous.”
Bill Lueders is managing editor of The Progressive.