Reporters for San Quentin News — the inmate-produced newspaper at San Quentin State Prison — have no newsroom to report to after prison officials recently suspended the paper’s operations.

The paper was suspended for 45 days after “inmates circumvented the editorial process by publishing disapproved content” in their December issue, according to an email from San Quentin spokesman Lt. Sam Robinson. The suspension ends Saturday.

Newspaper adviser Bill Drummond, a University of California at Berkeley journalism professor, said the suspension stems from inmate editors switching a photo after the page was already approved by prison staff. He said the suspension was overkill and has had a devastating effect on inmate morale.

“The picture in question has no salacious content. The picture they published was the same content of an inmate and volunteer,” Drummond said. “It’s an unfortunate and unhappy incident.”

While the inmate staff of about 15 has the ability to write, design and edit the 20-page monthly newspaper, it’s prison management that has final say on what is printed. The paper is the only one of its kind in the state and has a total press run of 11,500, distributing papers to prison staff, newspaper supporters and 15 other state prisons.

Robinson said the unapproved December issues were thrown away. The issue was reprinted with the approved photo and distributed as usual, he said.

When asked why the inmates weren’t given a warning instead of a suspension, Robinson said the newspaper staff failed to adhere to “journalistic standards and a checks and balances system where copy, photographs, graphics and other content goes through an editing process.” He said the inmates acknowledged they violated protocol.

“I think it is simple enough to say that after the review process is completed, and if there are subsequent adjustments after the initial review submission; it is only correct to have the adjustments reviewed prior to going to print as a final copy,” Robinson said in an email.

But Managing Editor Juan Haines, who is 17 years into his 55-years-to-life sentence for multiple bank robberies, thinks other issues may have factored into the suspension decision.

On LifeoftheLaw.org, a blog about American law supported by a grant from Open Society Foundations, blog director and lawyer Mary Adkins wrote about the suspension. She said Haines, a new contributor to the blog, told her about the photograph issue and the newspaper’s dormant state.

“Haines links the photograph to a controversy that occurred during family visits to the prison the week of Christmas; prison officials, according to Haines, also pointed to a posting on the San Quentin News Facebook page ‘editorializing’ about the controversy and said it factored into the shutdown decision. Haines says the inmate staff has no control over the Facebook page,” Adkins wrote.

In talking about the “controversy,” Adkins linked to an article printed in the Marin Independent Journal in December about toys that were donated by the Vietnam Veterans’ Group of San Quentin for distribution to visiting children that were confiscated by correctional officers. Prison officials confirmed at the time to the Independent Journal that some toys were taken back from children by prison staff because they exceeded the two gift per visit limit.

Robinson, the prison’s spokesman, said the events are not related.

“There is no connection,” he said.

The inmate-run newspaper’s suspension comes as it was recently recognized by the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for accomplishing extraordinary journalism under the scrutiny of prison authorities.

“These prison reporters, along with volunteers from the outside, raise the curtain of secrecy that shrouds those who live behind the walls,” the award press release said.

Contact Megan Hansen via email at mhansen@marinij.com or via Twitter at http://twitter.com/hansenmegan. Follow her blog at http://blogs.marinij.com/bureaucratsandbaking.