A New Prison Policy Blocks Incarcerated Journalists and Artists From Publishing Their Work

Update: On June 7, one day after this article was published, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision rescinded its directive blocking the publication of creative work. Read our follow-up story here.

John J. Lennon has built an unlikely career. As a journalist writing from within the prisons he covers, he has spent the last decade offering a rare inside perspective into politics, health, and recreation behind bars. His most recent feature, in The New York Times, illustrated how rising housing prices leave those released from prison with few options to avoid homelessness. He’s landed a book deal and a contributing editor position with Esquire.

“Writing has changed my life,” he told New York Focus in a phone call from Sullivan Correctional Facility. “I’ve been able to grapple on the page with a lot of things.” He also mentors others who’ve found solace writing while imprisoned.

But the agency that runs New York’s prisons is set to block Lennon and countless other incarcerated writers, artists, and poets from getting their work outside prison walls. Last month, the agency quietly handed down new rules severely curtailing what incarcerated writers and artists can publish — and forbidding them from getting paid for it.

The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision’s directive, which went into effect on May 11, establishes a stringent, months-long approval process for people in its custody to publish creative work, including books, art, music, poetry, film scripts, and other writing. It gives prison superintendents the power to block work from publication if it violates any of a number of broad rules — including bans on mentioning the artist or author’s crime and portraying DOCCS in a way that could “jeopardize safety or security.” And it stipulates that incarcerated people can’t be paid for their creative work without permission.

DOCCS didn’t seem to publicize the order: Neither Lennon nor watchdogs who spoke to New York Focus were aware of its existence, and it wasn’t posted to the department’s website until after New York Focus reached out for comment.

Like Lennon, Freddy Medina nurtured his passion for writing while in prison. Before his release last September, he wrote an essay and began reporting an article for New York Focus.

Second only to getting his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, “being published while I was incarcerated was one of the single most important things to happen to me,” he said. “I’d been wanting to be a writer since I was a child.”

It’s unclear whether his work — on hunger in prisons and guns in schools — would’ve made it past the new directive. New York Focus definitely wouldn’t have been allowed to pay him for it before his release.

Under the new rules, incarcerated artists and authors must submit all work they wish to publish to prison superintendents for approval, and publishing organizations must clear projects with DOCCS’s central office 60 days before they plan to receive work. The superintendents can then inspect works for violations.

Per the directive, they can block pieces that “promote sexual activity,” depict symbols of “unauthorized group activity,” “advocate rebellion against government authority,” or appear to be “written in code.”

Officials can also forbid publication of work that portrays “law enforcement officers or DOCCS in a manner which could jeopardize safety or security.” When New York Focus asked DOCCS to clarify this point, the department simply repeated it.

The directive also forbids including depictions of incarcerated people’s “crime or crime victims” in published work — an injustice, according to Lennon.

“I’ve worked through what I did — murder a man — on the page,” he said in a message. “In the absence of any restorative justice programming offered by corrections, that would help foster a dialogue between us and our victims, writing was the only opportunity for me to reflect on it at all.”

DOCCS said that, unless a piece violates prison contraband rules, incarcerated people may hold onto creative work the superintendent finds to not be “appropriate for public display.” But that might not mean much in practice, since the directive specifies that creative works that violate its criteria for publication “will be considered contraband.”

The new directive also prohibits incarcerated people from receiving any “prize, gift, or proceeds” from publishing their creative work. The only named exception is a participation certificate. If they do receive money, DOCCS will divert it to New York’s Office of Victim Services.

That part of the policy echoes an old New York statute — the nation’s first so-called “Son of Sam” law, passed in the 1970s — which allowed the state to confiscate and offer to victims the income that someone accused or convicted of a crime made from selling work describing the crime. In a near-unanimous 1991 decision, the US Supreme Court struck the law down for violating the First Amendment. (The legislature later passed a version allowing victims to sue for proceeds.)

In justifying the new payment ban, DOCCS pointed to the pre-existing directive barring people in its custody from conducting a “mail order” business. That parallels another legal battle: In 1998, a federal appellate court ruled that a Pennsylvania prison couldn’t use a similar no-business directive to prohibit publishers from paying writer Mumia Abu-Jamal.