American Prisoners Sue Government For Banning Porn In Prison

A convicted murderer jailed in Connecticut has sued the state saying a ban on pornography in prison violates his constitutional rights. Dwight Pink Jr is serving a 56-year sentence for his part in the 1998 killing of a 35-year-old man. The Atlas Of Foreshortening, which uses nude models to help show how to draw the human form. Pink says the ban is harmful, amounts to a violation of his free speech rights and serves no meaningful objective in prison.


The state maintained in its response on Monday that none of his rights were violated. "Any injury or harm, if any, was caused solely by plaintiff's own acts, omissions, or conduct and was not due to any wrongful conduct by the defendants," Assistant Attorney General Steven Strom wrote.

The 2001 rule bans all material that contains "pictorial depictions of sexual activity or nudity" from the prisons. But it also says the ban should not apply to "materials which, taken as a whole, are literary, artistic, educational or scientific in nature". Inmates were upset by the policy and threatened lawsuits.
Jaclyn Falkowski, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, said about a half dozen lawsuits have been filed since then challenging the ban in both federal and state courts. She said those cases are still being litigated.