Prison Banned Books Week

This year’s campaign focused on “appeals”

What are appeals?

Appeals are internal, prison paperwork that imprisoned people need to file in order to have any civil rights violations addressed. Appeals processes are different in all 52 carceral jurisdictions in America. Each appeals process can be up to six stages. At each stage people need to file complex paperwork on tight timelines and sometimes with fees.

These are read by correction officers and other prison staff.

Incarcerated people cannot legally file a lawsuit until they have exhausted all appeals. This can take months or years. Filing an appeal is challenging for many reasons. One of those reasons is that most appeals processes are not explained clearly and concisely. They’re buried in paperwork dozens of pages long and written in legalese.

Read what incarcerated journalists have experienced in the appeals process in Prison Journalism Project’s Prison Banned Books Week series.

This Prison Banned Books Week we’re making these processes transparent. We’ve put together a guide to filing an appeal in all 52 carceral jurisdictions. The Free Read Manual gives step by step instructions for how incarcerated people can challenge their treatment. It also contains the specific censorship criteria for each jurisdiction. People can only challenge censorship according to these criteria. Censorship is legal in prisons but prisons cannot legally deny people any and everything.

We’ve also created a form to submit needed corrections and changes to the Free Read Manual. Prison policies are constantly changing and we know the people who know the most are those closest to the problem. If you or a loved one knows of information in the Free Read Manual that needs updating simply submit this form and we will update the manual.