Bank’s lawsuit fought that Pennsylvania’s Long Term Segregation Unit policy of denying newspapers, personal photographs, and magazines violated his First Amendment rights.
The majority opinion doesn’t explicitly dispute whether Bank’s first amendment rights are being impeded, but justify the policy because its intent is rehabilitation. More importantly, the emphasis in the opinion appears to rest partly on Bank’s failure to prove the presumptuous nature of the policy, rather than solely basing the decision off the conclusion that Pennsylvania LTSU policy is justified. Breyer says the judgment of the prison officials is validated because Bank’s failed to introduce evidence that has proved otherwise. He still doesn’t ignore the evidence presented;
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Level one can have two visitors a month, call once a month, have access to GED training and the prison canteen, and are eligible for financial compensation. Justice Stevens argues the distinctions between the two levels, regardless of the newspaper and magazines (he omitted pictures because they are restricted in level one as well), offer enough incentive. Therefore, he rendered the prison officials “objective” for depriving inmate access to newspapers to produce an incentive for improved behavior as virtually worthless (to the inmate), and questionable. Justice Stevens held another argument against the “penological interest’; the fact that such a policy is absent from other high security prisons, and the “safety threat” newspapers, pictures, and magazines present are just as plausible by their other belongings; clothes, writing paper, a plate, and other materials. He also stresses the scary nature of the deprivation theory of rehabilitation; which would allow the government to assume an inmate’s rationale, or what he calls “state-sponsored effort at mind-control,” by justifying the denial of their rights in the assumption (or hope) it would produce positive behavioral change. Allowing such a provision would allow the government to have too much power, and contradicts the purpose of the First