With the planned closing of the Stillwater prison, the Minnesota Department of Corrections has notified inmates they need to downsize their storage bins — and for some that means picking between their legal documents and personal belongings, advocacy groups said Monday.
The DOC is also decreasing the amount of electronic storage space for legal and academic documents for people who are imprisoned throughout the state.
“There is a concerted assault on people-in-prisons’ ability to access their due process rights in court, … prove their innocence, address conditions,” said David Boehnke, co-executive director of Minnesota Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), which organized Monday’s news conference to sound the alarm.
The DOC said in a Monday statement that, as part of the phased four-year closing of Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, inmates are being transferred to other prisons with different physical layouts and fire code requirements.
“In particular, facilities with double-bunked housing units are subject to stricter storage limits for safety reasons,” the statement said. “The DOC has a generally applicable two bin property limit, including for legal materials, that has been repeatedly upheld when challenged in courts.”
DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell said he and his department understand the concerns raised and they “want to be clear: access to legal and educational materials is a right we are committed to upholding. The updates to our digital storage policy and property limits are driven by safety, operational capacity, and the need to modernize outdated systems.”
Inmates given options; advocates see problems
The aging and functionally obsolete Stillwater prison, which is actually located in Bayport, holds men with the lengthiest sentences and they have long been able to apply for an additional storage bin, according to IWOC.
As many as 100 men “are being told that their legal documents that they have been given approval for will be destroyed or must be shipped out when they transfer facilities, Boehnke said.
“When a person is sentenced to prison, the loss of their freedom is the punishment, not all of the other kinds of extraneous things that … eliminate their access to the court system,” said Michelle Gross, Communities United Against Police Brutality president. “They have that legal right … and the measures that the DOC is taking right now … deny people those rights.”
Stillwater prison inmates who were allowed a third storage bin for legal or academic materials “may be required to reduce to two bins to comply with fire safety standards or layout limitations,” the DOC said in its statement.
“This is not a punitive or targeted measure,” the statement continued. “The DOC is working closely with affected individuals to ensure that essential legal and academic materials are prioritized during the transfer process.”
Anyone who has “excess property” will have 30 days from the date they’re notified to make a decision, which could include shipping legal or other materials to family, friends or attorneys for long-term storage, the DOC said.
But inmates who are working on their own appeals need their documents because they “have a narrow window” and “have to have certain kinds of evidence,” Gross said.
“If this was happening when my brother Marvin Haynes was still in prison, he may still be there,” said Marvina Haynes, founder of MN Wrongfully Convicted Judicial Reform, whose brother spent 19 years in prison for murder before he was exonerated and released.
“I know how important legal documents are and how hard sometimes they are to obtain,” she added. “… Some of these folks have spent years waiting on specific documents.”
Electronic storage also at issue
Inmates keep their storage bins with them in their cells. Some go under beds or are stacked in a corner, Gross said. They are 11.25 inches by 32.25 inches by 16.25 inches, according to the DOC.
Kimberly Morgan, whose husband is incarcerated at the Stillwater prison, said he filed a petition for post-conviction relief in his case in July.
“He’s one of those at risk of losing or having to ship out his legal documentation, and if he has to do that, that’s really going to set him back a lot,” she said. He’s “having to choose between basic necessities like shoes, clothes, hygiene items or legal” documents.
If people have to get rid of their legal documents by mailing them out, it’s going to cost money and time, Morgan added.
DOC has also told inmates they’ll be reducing electronic storage of legal data from 50MB to 20MB per person and, anything not modified within one year will be automatically deleted. They’re not allowed to have personal external storage devices, such as USB or jump drives.
But evidence that includes videos and audio files can take up a lot of space, said Gross, who is a paralegal for a civil rights attorney.
“Why is the prison suddenly taking this position, especially given that … electronic storage … is dirt cheap,” she said. “… That’s actually probably easier than letting people have a bunch of paper documents. … Why are they curtailing people’s ability to have what they need to pursue their legal matters?”
The DOC is updating its digital file management practices for the first time since 2015 “in light of evolving technology and limited system-wide storage capacity,” the agency said in a statement.
The intention is “to steer storage and use of the computers to a more current model of use for legal, school, and transitional purposes, rather than a place to store documents indefinitely,” the statement continued.
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Academic materials
Inmates who are taking college courses for associate’s or bachelor’s degrees and who’ve been allowed an extra bin for their academic materials are also affected, according to IWOC.
“This isn’t just inconvenient,” Haynes said. “… Education is supposed to be a path to stability and opportunity, not a trap door that falls out from under you.”
She urged the institutions involved and elected officials “to find immediate situations.”
IWOC is calling on the Department of Corrections to allow people who had been permitted extra storage to keep it and to not reduce digital storage, but rather increase it.
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