Kansas prisons reject newspaper subscriptions, blindsiding publishers and cutting off information

Kansas Press Association executive director Emily Bradbury, pictured here on July 18, 2024, alerted members in late August to a policy change in Kansas prisons that could have ramifications for local newspaper publishers and people serving time. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA — Rob Morgan, owner and publisher of the Neodesha Derrick News in southeast Kansas, knew something wasn’t right when four subscriptions in a row were canceled.

All four, he noticed, were being delivered to correctional facilities.

“Four subscribers — that’s a big hit,” Morgan said. “I hate to say that.”

The Kansas Department of Corrections, which oversees all youth and adult detention facilities, changed without notice its department-wide newspaper subscription policy on Aug. 27, blindsiding newspaper publishers across Kansas.

Previously, families of incarcerated people could take out a newspaper subscription in a person’s name and have it delivered to a state facility. The agency says it made the change, forbidding newspaper subscriptions paid for by outside parties, for safety.

But for those serving time, a subscription can act as a tether to reality while inside a Kansas prison’s walls.

One person at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility had a subscription to the Neodesha paper through his parents, Morgan said.

“He looks forward to that because his children get in the paper from time to time,” he said.

Morgan is a self-described “little guy” and a one-man operation. The weekly paper stays away from politics and reports on community happenings for about 300 print subscribers and roughly 150 online subscribers in and around Wilson County.

Another man serving time had a subscription to the Neodesha Derrick News that was purchased by his mother and paid for through 2027. She has since died, and Morgan doesn’t quite know what to do. Two of the four canceled subscriptions have been rerouted to the families of people in prison, but Morgan said he has not received any requests from inside the Kansas prison system to restore access to the Neodesha Derrick News.

Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, alerted association members to the canceled newspaper subscriptions the day after the policy went into effect.

Following the change, this year’s subscriptions will not be honored, and incarcerated individuals must jump through hoops to regain access to credible local information, Bradbury said.

“Creating barriers to real information is not beneficial to the newspaper or to the inmate,” Bradbury said in an interview. “If the whole goal is to re-assimilate these inmates back into society when they’ve done their time, how are they going to know what’s going on?”

The new policy requires people serving time in state facilities to request a subscription on their own, undergo an approval process and pay for the subscription out of their commissary accounts.

David Thompson, a spokesman for the state corrections department, said it “takes the safety and well-being of its residents seriously.”

“The policy was updated primarily to enhance KDOC’s ability to protect residents and employees from dangerous contraband. This policy change applies to physical subscriptions only — digital access to newspapers remains unchanged,” Thompson said.

The policy singles out newspapers, making no mention of magazines or other periodicals.

Max Kautsch, the media hotline attorney for press association members, said the corrections department must show why the policy change and canceling existing subscriptions were necessary to protect residents.

“The real smoking gun here is that the publishers of the newspapers were never notified of the possibility that their subscribers would not be able to consume their publication,” he said. “The case law is very clear that publishers do have a due process right to know if that is going to happen.”

How community newspapers pose a threat to prison operations is unclear. However, Thompson said Monday that the new process has gone smoothly. Multiple newspaper subscriptions have been approved, and more are in the process. The only rejections thus far were related to payment issues or a publication’s inability to meet certain verification requirements, such as direct receipts, packing slips or labels allowing a newspaper issue to be tracked, Thompson said.

“Resident access to information is important to KDOC, and this policy is not designed to reject publications,” he said. “Rather, it aims to streamline ordering through approved vendors while maintaining safety standards.”

The suddenness of the decision bothered Bradbury, who has led the press association for eight years.

She wondered: “What could we have done to solve this instead of creating this burdensome, bureaucratic process for someone to go about getting a product that would educate them about what’s happening in their communities?”

Bradbury also said the press association was exploring all of its options in how to respond to the policy change.

Surrounding states have similar restrictions, but their policies don’t single out newspapers.

In Nebraska, printed materials, including magazines, newspapers and other periodicals, must be delivered directly from a publisher. Incarcerated individuals can submit orders for subscription materials in any month and aren’t subject to the typical four-order limit, according to Nebraska Department of Corrections policies.

In Oklahoma, the state cannot “implement a prohibition on any materials that inmates may receive by subscription, such as a magazine, newspaper, or other similar type of periodical,” according to Oklahoma Department of Corrections policy. Each issue delivered to an Oklahoma facility has to be reviewed to ensure it doesn’t violate the agency’s correspondence restrictions, which include materials containing instructions about drug or arms manufacturing, survival guide information, advocacy for overthrowing a government, sexually explicit materials, or encouraging criminal activity.

Thompson said the department is “fully engaged with residents to handle any issues that may arise.”

Bradbury, who didn’t receive an explanation from the state for why the policy changed, said she would like to see a return to the old policy. Kautsch said any fix must involve a content-neutral policy that serves a legitimate penological interest.