After losing a First Amendment case in Colorado, the Bureau of Prisons is scratching two regulations prohibiting federal prisoners from publishing articles under their own name.
In a Federal Register entry to be published on Friday, the BOP said it will strike the byline portions from the following provisions:
28 CFR § 540.20(b): “The inmate may not receive compensation or anything of value for correspondence with the news media. The inmate may not act as reporter or publish under a byline.”
28 CFR § 540.62(d) “An inmate currently confined in an institution may not be employed or act as a reporter or publish under a byline.”
The government had argued that inmates who published under a byline could “rise to undue prominence within the inmate population, thereby becoming a security risk.” But in 2007 U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger ruled that the regulations were too broad and that government had presented no evidence that inmates’ past publications jeopardized security.
The provisions barring compensation remain in effect.
A group of University of Denver Law School students filed the lawsuit challenging the regulations on behalf Mark Jordan, a convicted bank robber held at Supermax, the ultra-high-security prison in Florence, Colo.
