{"id":130509,"date":"2014-07-15T20:20:51","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T20:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=130509"},"modified":"2014-07-15T20:20:51","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T20:20:51","slug":"inmate-faces-90-days-solitary-confinement-facebook-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/sicence-technology\/inmate-faces-90-days-solitary-confinement-facebook-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"Inmate Faces 90 Days in Solitary Confinement Over a Facebook Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Maass<\/em><\/p>\n

Like more than a billion other people on the planet, Eric Aldaz had a Facebook profile. What made Aldaz\u2019s profile different from most is that he was unable to post to it himself: he didn\u2019t hold the login credentials or even have any kind of access to the Internet. He is an inmate of the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) and his family maintained the page on his behalf.<\/p>\n

New Mexico has an\u00a0obscure prison policy<\/a>\u00a0that forbids inmates from accessing the Internet directly or through \u201cthird parties.\u201d Now, Aldaz is facing 90 days in solitary confinement because he refused to tell his family to take his Facebook profile down.<\/p>\n

\"Thumbnail<\/p>\n

To New Mexico\u2019s credit, the corrections department agreed to reopen Aldaz\u2019s disciplinary case and to review the policy after EFF started asking questions and filing public records requests. The inmate has yet to be placed in disciplinary segregation. With hopes of heading it off, EFF, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, the Human Rights Defense Center and Prison Legal News have sent a letter to NMCD asking the agency to repeal the policy and undo the punishment leveled at the inmate.<\/p>\n

Read the letter to NMCD\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

EFF first learned of NMCD\u2019s policy when a local Albuquerque television station aired a\u00a0report<\/a>about how an inmate at the Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility in Clayton was violating the prison\u2019s social media ban by having a Facebook page. The one-line rule was buried on page 28 of the department’s “Information Technology Management” policy, a document primarily for staff that contained no further definitions or guidance:<\/p>\n

\n

Offenders in the custody or supervision of the Department are not permitted access to the Internet, nor are they permitted to obtain access to the Internet through third parties.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Records<\/a>\u00a0indicates that the same day of the news broadcast, NMCD (by way of Geo Group, the private contractor that runs the facility) began disciplinary proceedings again Aldaz. Initially, Aldaz claimed he had no way to access the profile. Later, when officers overheard Aldaz asking a family member to upload new profile photos and to post a response about the news story and people \u201chating\u201d on him, he was punished for disobeying orders with three months in disciplinary segregation.<\/p>\n

Last October, the ACLU of New Mexico and the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty issued\u00a0a detailed investigation<\/a>\u00a0into the abuse of solitary confinement in New Mexico prisons and jails, concluding that the status quo violated fundamental civil rights and was psychologically damaging to inmates. Prison officials conceded the point that too often nonviolent offenders are being placed in solitary, and agreed to address the problem. Even New Mexico Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel\u00a0spent time<\/a>\u00a0in disciplinary segregation to experience firsthand what it\u2019s like to spend 23 hours of every day in a cramped cell with severely limited social interaction.<\/p>\n

In the letter, we write that Aldaz\u2019s punishment seems extraordinarily disproportionate considering the nonviolent nature of the offense, which we would argue is not an offense at all.<\/p>\n

In nearby Arizona, restrictions on inmate access to Internet through third parties were ruledunconstitutional<\/a>\u00a0a decade ago when a judge\u00a0determined<\/a>\u00a0that the policies served no legitimate penological interest. We argue the same principles apply here: these prohibitions infringe on the free speech rights of not only the inmates, but the inmates’ friends and family and anyone seeks to speak on their behalves. Although NMCD claims it only applies this policy to social media pages, the language is so broad that it could be used to punish inmates for innocuous acts such as asking their family to pay their outstanding credit bills through online banking or to send print-outs of medical information from health websites. The rule could also pose a chilling affect for anyone who would like to post information online about an inmate for fear that the prison may believe the inmate had some control over the speech.<\/p>\n

In reviewing the records, EFF identified several additional concerns. For one, NMCD had not developed any kind of detailed process for enforcing the policy. They had not well publicized the rule, which was buried deep in a document geared towards NMCD staff and contractors, not inmates. It was unclear whether Aldaz had ever been notified of the policy at all. We were also alarmed to learn that NMCD had been contacting online service providers to get inmate pages taken down, without keeping any records. NMCD\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0EFF it was able to get Aldaz\u2019s page removed over the phone with Facebook.<\/p>\n

NMCD has expressed its openness to overhauling the policy and we look forward to working with them. As we write in the letter:<\/p>\n

\n

No one should serve 90 days, or even a single day, in solitary confinement for simply having a Facebook page.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Maass Like more than a billion other people on the planet, Eric Aldaz had a Facebook profile. What made Aldaz\u2019s profile different from most is that he was unable to post to it himself: he didn\u2019t hold the login credentials or even have any kind of access to the Internet. He is an inmate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-130509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-sicence-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}