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The Southwest Virginia Regional Jail Authority violated a nonprofit’s due process rights when it blocked prisoners from accessing books and magazines the nonprofit sent them, Judge James P. Jones ruled in the U.S. District Court in Abingdon last week.

The Human Rights Defense Center, a prisoners’ rights organization, regularly distributes reading material to inmates, covering legal news, current events and inmates’ rights. Over a million copies of its monthly magazines have been delivered to inmates since its founding in 1990.

Although the jail allowed books and other publications to be collected in a common reading room, from which prisoners could request up to two books at a time, the jail authority adopted a new policy in 2016 that banned any books or publications from being delivered without case-by-case preapproval. Prisoners would be required to submit requests for each new magazine.

According to the suit, the authority returned hundreds of magazine issues to the HRDC without clearly stating their policy on why they were being rejected.