A state appeals court has upheld California's policy banning prison inmates from possessing anything showing images of male or female frontal nudity—even if it is a copy of Time magazine.
The 4th District Court of Appeals sided with the California Department of Corrections April 11, ruling that the three-year-old ban was a legitimate way to protect female prison guards against what the department has called harassment or having sexually explicit material turned into barter goods. The department also said the ban would "avoid anatomical comparisons [that] could lead to fights between inmates."
The appellate court upheld the ruling of trial judge Joan M. Lewis. "Many cases have found that prison safety and security are legitimate penological interests," Justice Terry O'Rourke wrote for the appellate court, ruling that the California ban met constitutional requirements of neutrality and rationality.
An inmate at San Diego prison Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, Stephen Snow, challenged the ban after magazine photographs of nude women were confiscated. His charge reportedly challenged the seizure of images of women with exposed breasts, an art photograph of a nude woman, an issue of an adult magazine, and a copy of Time that included a photo of a nude painting.
What Snow failed to provide, Justice O'Rourke wrote, was enough evidence "to refute a common-sense connection between sexually explicit images and the sexual harassment of female correctional officers and other security problems.” He also said the ban does not deprive prison inmates of adequate alternative ways to express themselves.
But O'Rourke also said that the California ban doesn't stop inmates from having merely provocative pictures or sexually explicit writings and also exempts materials like medical texts, art reference books, National Geographic, and books bought for prison libraries and educational programs.
It was not yet known whether Snow planned to appeal to a federal court.
