ACLU says Department of Corrections is illegally limiting access to attorneys in Alaska

Inmates from Hiland Mountain Correctional Center activity connected various creation projects connected Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Matt Faubion/Alaska Public Media)

Civil liberties advocates are accusing nan Alaska Department of Corrections of unconstitutionally limiting prisoners’ entree to attorneys astatine nan state’s only all-female prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska made nan allegations successful a missive to nan section past month. 

ACLU of Alaska Prison Project Director Megan Edge said her group hears from hundreds of inmates each month, but not uniformly.

“We ever thought it was overseas we weren’t proceeding from galore women,” Edge said successful an interview. So Edge said nan group did immoderate digging.

“Through a assortment of different investigations, what we started proceeding from women was that they did not consciousness comfortable penning nan ACLU of Alaska because of nan Department of Corrections’ message policies,” she said. “The Department of Corrections is scanning and reference each ineligible archive that’s going done it.”

Department of Corrections argumentation prohibits mailroom unit from reference aliases searching ineligible message marked “privileged,” including correspondence pinch nan ACLU.

But Edge said unit astatine Hiland Mountain Correctional Center successful Eagle River aren’t treating inmates’ letters to and from nan ACLU arsenic privileged communication. 

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held successful 2014 that situation officials tin inspect outgoing ineligible message to guarantee it doesn’t incorporate things for illustration contraband, an flight scheme aliases a representation of a prison. But nan ruling prohibits correctional officers from really reference ineligible mail.

The ACLU raised nan rumor to nan Department of Corrections past period successful a six-page letter detailing a assortment of different issues that nan group said break prisoners’ First Amendment correct to free reside and Sixth Amendment correct to counsel.

Edge said ACLU unit person besides heard situation unit listening successful connected telephone calls betwixt clients and their attorneys. And she said prisoners person been ordered to support nan doorway to a visitation room unfastened while gathering pinch attorneys.

In 1 lawsuit she called “alarming,” Edge said Hiland Mountain unit grounded to delete confidential files from an inmate’s criminal lawsuit from a shared computer, allowing different prisoners and correctional officers to spot them.

“These are specifications that are sometimes nan astir backstage specifications of somebody’s somebody’s life,” she said. “It’s a vulnerable business for a assortment of reasons, and that’s why find is expected to stay confidential until it is allowed to beryllium introduced arsenic grounds successful a tribunal proceeding.”

According to nan ACLU, nan female later received a missive from a elder Corrections Department charismatic acknowledging nan error. But nan section did not outline steps to forestall it from happening again.

Asked for a consequence to nan ACLU’s allegations, Department of Corrections spokesperson Betsy Holley said she had shared nan missive pinch DOC Commissioner Jen Winkelman and nan superintendent for Hiland Mountain, Brandon Jones. She said “matters requiring attraction were addressed,” but did not respond to consequent questions asking what was addressed, and how.

Edge said it’s imaginable correctional officers aren’t acquainted pinch prisoners’ authorities to pass pinch their attorneys and that simply educating unit could spell a agelong way. But failing that, she said nan group will return “the due adjacent measurement to hole it.” She declined to opportunity whether nan group would sue.