On 21 February we received a copy of a letter from the Prison and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) to Jason Michael, a prisoner in HMP Frankland, who had complained about the June/July 2021 issue of FRFI being censored. Initially the whole paper was withheld but following Jason’s first complaint, Frankland’s FRFI subscribers were issued with it all bar the prison page (and by extension, the reviews on the other side).
In response to the PPO investigation the prison clarified that the article it objected to was one entitled ‘End solitary confinement’. The PPO was nonplussed by this, commenting that ‘While critical of the prison service, there is no content that appears to undermine the good order/security of the prison or content that is particularly inflammatory or incites any kind of violence’. It therefore asked the prison to issue the missing page to Mr Michael. Initially, the prison governor Brendan Feeney refused; however, he eventually backed down, perhaps realising that a judicial review challenge on this point would be both unsuccessful and embarrassing.
FRFI and our readers will continue to contest this type of petty censorship via all the available channels, every time it occurs. We have battled this type of interference for the whole of FRFI’s history and will never accept attempts by the prison system to ban our material.
