It’s maybe the most remarkable resident acting company in the world. If you’re seeing their performance of The Tempest, you’re either among the very fortunate — or among the doomed. Because this is the Luther Luckett Correctional Center, a medium-security prison in LaGrange, Kentucky, and this cast is here for the longest run you can imagine.

For seven years before The Tempest, Curt Tofteland had overseen Shakespeare Behind Bars as an offshoot of the Kentucky Shakespeare festival. Shakespeare Behind Bars is director Hank Rogerson’s documentary of Tofteland’s prison production of The Tempest in its nine-month gestation, from its first workshops through its performance.

http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fnf06n2.html

LETTER: Where is real community involvement?

For the 21st consecutive year, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has awarded “Jefferson Muzzles” to those who in the previous year committed particularly egregious or ridiculous affronts to free expression.  Located in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Center announces the dubious honors each year on or near the April 13 birth date of its namesake.

Listed below, in no particular order, are summaries of all the 2012 Jefferson Muzzles.  More information on each “winner” can be found on the official page of the Jefferson Muzzles.

9) The Virginia Department of Corrections

2010:   “A 2010 Jefferson Muzzle is awarded to the Virginia Department of Corrections in hopes that it will serve as a reminder . . . to not wait until after the threat of a lawsuit before giving proper consideration of First Amendment principles in formulating policy.”

2011:   “It is with high hopes that the awarding of this second Jefferson Muzzle will result in Virginia Department of Corrections prison officials giving greater consideration to inmates’ First Amendment rights—without the intervention of a lawsuit.”

2012:   “He that lives upon hope will die fasting.” – Benjamin Franklin

For demonstrating a pattern of disregard for the First Amendment rights of Virginia inmates, the third Lifetime Jefferson Muzzle ever awarded goes…The Virginia  Department of Corrections.

Owen North wanted to buy a Christmas present for his friend, Shawn Goode, an inmate at Nottoway Correctional Center in Virginia. He selected a boxed set of 11 CDs featuring renowned Welsh author Dylan Thomas reading his own poetry and prose, as well as that of other writers, including W.H. Auden and William Shakespeare. But when North submitted the gift for approval to the officials at Nottoway as required, it was denied. Virginia Department of Corrections policy dictated that inmates could only have access to approved music and faith-based spoken word CDs, such as religious sermons.  Secular spoken word CDs, on the other hand, were barred along with other media that Department officials felt might be “detrimental to the security, good order, discipline of the facility, or offender rehabilitative efforts or the safety or health of offenders, staff, or others.”

Officials claimed that the issue was about personnel, not speech. The system, they said, simply didn’t have the resources necessary to screen thousands of novels, non-fiction, and other works on CD to ensure that a recording had not been tampered with and did not contain inappropriate material. Yet it is difficult to envision how such malfeasance could take place given that all CDs to Virginia inmates must be ordered through a single licensed dealer.  For this reason, coupled with the VDOC’s history of overlooking the free speech rights of inmates until such policies are challenged in court, caused some to view with skepticism the “lack of resources” justification for the policy.

The Department earned its first Muzzle in 2010 when it denied a prisoner access to religious sermons on CD. Shortly after the inmate challenged the decision on free speech and free exercise grounds, the Department agreed to revise its policy to permit spoken word recordings—but only those of a religious nature. In 2011, the Department was once again awarded a Muzzle after banning “The Jailhouse Lawyer’s Handbook: How to Bring a Federal Lawsuit to Challenge Violations of Your Rights in Prison.” As before, the policy was challenged in court and the Department quickly changed course.

Like those before him, North got nowhere dealing directly with the Department, so in early 2011, he filed suit challenging the ban on secular spoken word recordings. This time, rather than settling, the Department sought to defend its policy at trial. In February 2011, the court granted North’s motion for summary judgment. According to U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer, the Department’s CD policy bore “no rational relationship” to its security and rehabilitation interests. And, as to the claim that an influx of new recordings might overwhelm prison resources, Judge Spencer concluded that the Department’s “hypersensitivity to costs is nothing more than grand speculation—one that does not warrant the unauthorized burdening of constitutional rights.”

The Virginia Department of Corrections is tasked with the unenviable challenge of balancing its penological interest in security and rehabilitation with the rights of those incarcerated in its facilities. Yet, in three consecutive years, DOC restrictions were reversed after being challenged in court as violative of an inmate’s free speech rights. Clearly, the current balance is unsound. Unless the Department finally commits to formulating policies consistent with the First Amendment, Virginia inmates will continue to suffer the piecemeal deprivation of their constitutional rights. Some will take action to defend those rights, but many others—perhaps most—will not. It may be foolish to once again express optimism that this latest award will inspire Department officials to be more sensitive to prisoners’ First Amendment rights, but hope, they say, springs eternal. At the very least, we hope that come next April, the Virginia Department of Corrections does not become the first ever to receive a Jefferson Muzzle Award four years running!