Prisoners in Missouri who read The Economist may not have received the June 29th issue because the Missouri Department of Corrections believed the issue contained material that could incite violence.And from the Economist's Democracy in America blog:
According to a letter sent by the Missouri Department of Corrections to The Economist the issue “1.constitutes a threat to the security or discipline of the institution; 2. may facilitate or encourage criminal activity; or 3. may interfere with the rehabilitation of an offender.”...MORE
The Economist in prison
About that missing issue
IF YOU are reading this in a prison in Missouri you probably didn't receive the June 29th issue of The Economist (pictured at right). For this we apologise, though it wasn't our fault. We recently received a letter from the Missouri Department of Corrections informing us that the issue had been censored.
Was this a pre-emptive strike against our editorialising on prison reform? Were Missouri officials unhappy with our endorsement of Barack Obama? Do they hate puppies? Up until 1974 any of those reasons might have been used to restrict prisoner mail. But that year the Supreme Court ruled that officials in California were violating prisoners' first-amendment rights by censoring mail for arbitrary reasons, like its political or religious content, or because it criticised the prison itself....MORE
