David Shapiro ’05 on Freedom of Speech in Prisons

David M. Shapiro, a 2005 graduate of Yale Law School and current Clinical Assistant Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law, examines in a George Washington Law Review article whether the Turner v. Safley standard strikes a reasonable balance between the deference due to prison officials and the expressive liberties of incarcerated men and women. 

The Supreme Court declared thirty years ago in Turner v. Safley that prisoners are not without constitutional rights: any restriction on those rights must be justified by a reasonable relationship between the restriction at issue and a legitimate penological objective. In practice, however, the decision has given prisoners virtually no protection. Exercising their discretion under Turner, correctional officials have saddled prisoners’ expressive rights with a host of arbitrary restrictions.

Through numerous examples of unjustified prison speech restrictions imposed throughout the country, Professor Shapiro offers new perspective on the Turner standard, claiming that prison and jail officials often act as if unconstrained by judicial review and impose arbitrary (indeed, nonsensical) restrictions on speech.

Read the full article, published in The George Washington Law Review.