Give Prisoners a Voice to Increase Prison Accountability

Demetria D. Frank, Prisoner-to-Public Communication, 84 Brook. L. Rev. 115 (2018). SpearIt If prisons are about keeping prisoners locked in, it is safe to say that they do an equally good job of keeping the public out. Professor Demetria D. Frank’s article, Prisoner-to-Public Communication, explores how prison mail policy does both: The practice of censoring outgoing prisoner mail keeps some speech from ever escaping the prison, and by default, the public is made more ignorant about prison life and conditions. As a result of this censorship, there is less public knowledge and less motivation for greater public oversight of corrections facilities. Frank’s remedy for these twin harms is to provide prisoners with an “unqualified and unfettered prisoner-to-public communication” right as a means of validating prisoner voices and increasing the accountability of the executive branch of government. The issue Frank raises is critical in the age of mass…

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