access to physical books<\/a>, magazines and periodicals amount to a near-total ban and violate the Constitution\u2019s First and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the Texas Constitution.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cFor incarcerated readers, materials like HRDC\u2019s publications provide life-changing access to education,\u201d the lawsuit, filed on Sept. 4, says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
HRDC is a nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of people in detention facilities. The organization has multiple publications, including Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, designed to educate and inform incarcerated individuals about their legal rights.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
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\u201cEach of HRDC\u2019s publications provides information about important legal issues, such as access to courts and counsel, disciplinary hearings, prison conditions, court opinions, excessive force cases, mail censorship, jail litigation, visitation, access to telephones, religious freedom, sexual assault, and the death penalty, among other topics,\u201d the lawsuit says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lawsuit states the HDRC materials are not accessible on jail-issued tablets, which incarcerated people use instead of physical reading materials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have tablets that are issued to inmates and books are available on those tablets each and every day,\u201d Brown said in a video statement on Facebook on Aug. 27.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brown said the department removed access to physical books from inmates because some were using the materials to \u201ccompromise the security operation of the doors.\u201d She said inmates still have access to physical books in the jail libraries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Dallas County Sheriff\u2019s Department declined to comment on ongoing litigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In April, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice cracked down on hardcover books entering its prisons because of an uptick in narcotics. TDCJ said there was a rise in contraband, as books containing or soaked in narcotics were entering prison mailrooms. At the time of the policy change, 385 books had been identified to contain drugs \u2013 a number representing a fraction of the books entering correctional facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The April policy change raised concerns about access to literature, a sentiment echoed by HRDC\u2019s new lawsuit. The suit also says the organization \u201cattempted to work with\u201d the county and sheriff\u2019s office before taking legal action.<\/p>\n
\u201cHRDC brings this action to stop Defendants from censoring protected speech with incarcerated persons and to obtain due process in challenging the denials,\u201d the lawsuit says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prison Legal News, a publication from HRDC, sued Dallas County in 2007<\/a> for free speech violations. The complaint targeted then-Sheriff Lupe Valdez\u2019s newspaper and magazine ban designed to \u201celiminate clutter.\u201d Dallas County ultimately settled, allowing Prison Legal News as permitted mail-in materials.\u00a0 <\/p>\nAlmost 40 years earlier, a group of inmates sued the county for overarching poor conditions such as overcrowding, censorship and inadequate medical care. In the 1971 case, a judge ruled jail officials were prohibited from destroying physical media like books and magazines unless they posed a safety hazard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
HRDC has won most of the challenges it\u2019s raised against similar policies in other jails and prisons. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas County Jail near downtown. Mike Brooks The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) is suing Dallas County,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,7963],"class_list":["post-432957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-social-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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