Safeguarding Prison Art Through Outgoing Correspondence Rights

Incarcerated people are increasingly turning toward art as a creative outlet. Many incarcerated artists seek to mail their art to relatives, friends, or organizations that display or sell their art to the public. Prisons have responded to this trend with myriad regulations on prisoners’ transmission of art. This comment assesses First Amendment protections for prisoners’ mailed transmission of art to the outside world. Although the Supreme Court has granted prison administrators significant deference for restrictions on prisoners’ speech, there is doctrinal support for heightened scrutiny of regulations on prisoners’ correspondence to the outside world. Procedural barriers to incarcerated people’s vindication of rights and the conceptual similarities between artistic speech and religious speech also justify the need for more probing judicial review into regulations on prisoners’ artistic correspondence.