Court Opinion

ID: 9491513
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:16:11.284803+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:47.297911
License: Public Domain

Wald, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The prohibition to all federal prisoners of publications “featuring nudity” or depicting “sexually explicit” activities indisputably raises First Amendment concerns. See, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, — U.S. --, -, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 2346, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997) (“In evaluating the free speech rights of adults, we have made it perfectly clear that sexual expression which is indecent but not obscene is protected by the First Amendment.”) (internal quotation omitted); Martin v. Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 143, 63 S.Ct. 862, 87 L.Ed. 1313 (1943) (noting that the right of freedom of speech “necessarily protects the right to receive [publications]”). Indeed, if the First Amendment, at its core, is designed to promote the free exchange of ideas, the debate in this case goes to the very heart of its protections. The government argues that the reason all publications featuring nudity or sexually explicit material, whether or not they are pornographic or obscene, should be withheld from all federal prisoners is that any pictorial display of nudity or sexual activity communicates messages that are harmful to the rehabilitation of all prisoners. Relying on what it claims to be the inherent reasonableness of a legislative judgment that such materials are always inimical to rehabilitation, the government throughout this case has steadfastly resisted creating any kind of record to support such a wide-reaching incursion on the constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals. Today, the majority unquestioningly endorses the government’s approach. Because I believe this result sets an unwise and arbitrary precedent that runs contrary to prior ease law, I respectfully dissent.1
*204It appears to need restating once again that prisoners do not lose all their constitutional rights when the prison door clangs behind them. While the prison gate may serve to isolate those inside from the outside world, it does not, as the Supreme Court has taken pains to emphasize, “form a barrier separating prison inmates from the protections of the Constitution.” Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 84, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987). Although the majority pays lip service to this canon, it ignores an important corollary: Whatever sentiments we might hold regarding prisoners for the crimes they have committed, these sentiments must not infect our determination of the prisoners’ constitutional rights. Indeed, the Supreme Court has recently reaffirmed, albeit in a different context, that “ ‘a bare ... desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest.’ ” Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 634, 116 S.Ct. 1620, 134 L.Ed.2d 855 (1996) (quoting Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528, 534, 93 S.Ct. 2821, 37 L.Ed.2d 782 (1973)) (invalidating state constitutional amendment prohibiting official action designed to protect homosexual persons from discrimination). So long as prisoners retain constitutional rights, including First Amendment rights, see O’Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 348, 107 S.Ct. 2400, 96 L.Ed.2d 282 (1987) (“Inmates clearly retain protections afforded by the First Amendment .... ”), our duty is to ensure that these rights are not impermissibly curtailed.2
It is equally true, however, that the unique and difficult task of running a prison will often necessitate some incursion on inmates’ constitutional rights. A prisoner’s desire to leave the prison once a week to attend religious services, for example, or his desire to correspond with other inmates may conflict with the prison’s need to maintain institutional security. In these instances, courts must give a large measure of deference to the prison administrators who are actively involved in the daily operations of the institution. Courts are not in the best position to judge when or in what manner certain institutional interests may require some action on the part of prison officials to respond to the “complex and intractable” problems of prison administration. Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 405, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974), overruled in part by Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 109 S.Ct. 1874, 104 L.Ed.2d 459 (1989). Most of these problems, as the Supreme Court reminds us, “require expertise, comprehensive planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are peculiarly within the province of the legislative and executive branches of government.” Id.
As the majority has duly noted, the Court’s standard in Safley recognizes the need to forge a balance between the competing interests of prison administration and prisoners’ constitutional rights. As I read this standard, it embraces two principles. First, fundamental rights of prisoners must give way to governmental concerns more readily than the fundamental rights of non-*205prisoners. In adopting a test “less restrictive than that ordinarily applied to alleged infringements of fundamental constitutional rights,” O’Lone, 482 U.S. at 349, 107 S.Ct. 2400, the Court intended to ensure that “courts afford appropriate deference to prison officials,” id. To require that prison regulations infringing upon fundamental rights undergo strict scrutiny, as they would outside the prison context, would place an inordinately high obstacle in the way of prison administrators’ attempts to run their institution safely and efficiently. Second, and significantly, the Court did not intend Safley’s lesser standard of review to negate prisoners’ constitutional rights altogether, as the majority seems to suggest. The Court did not say, for example, that prison regulations are valid if there is any conceivable basis for their existence, as rational basis review is typically formulated. See, e.g., United States R.R. Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166, 179, 101 S.Ct. 453, 66 L.Ed.2d 368 (1980) (noting that where, under rational basis review, “there are plausible reasons for Congress’ action, our inquiry is at an end”). Rather, the task for courts is to determine, while giving appropriate deference to the judgment of prison officials, whether a challenged regulation is, in fact, reasonable or whether it is an “exaggerated response” to the “legitimate governmental interest put forward to justify it.” Safley, 482 U.S. at 89-90,107 S.Ct. 2254 (emphasis added); see also Laurenoe H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 1445 n.21 (2d ed. 1988) (“Any limit placed on the Court’s imagination vis-a-vis legislative purpose must be recognized as a tightened form of scrutiny.”). A governmental institution is permitted “regulation more intrusive than what may lawfully apply to the general public,” Majority Opinion (“Maj.Op.”) at 196, not simply because of its status but rather because of the identifiable, and unique, needs of that institution. And although the need for flexibility is perhaps at its highest in the prison environment, the need for limits on that flexibility is also paramount: Unlike government employees, students, or other participants in governmental institutions, prisoners have no choice about whether to be subject to the power of the state.
To read Safley — as the majority appears to — as permitting unblinking deference to any “plausible” legislative judgment about the “rehabilitative” benefits of denying a prisoner’s most fundamental constitutional right, ie., her freedom to read, renders any and all prisoners’ constitutional rights a nullity. I had thought it went without saying that courts do not rely on the mere assertion of a regulation’s drafters that the regulation is reasonable; to do so would amount to an abdication of our judicial role. See, e.g., Salaam v. Lockhart, 905 F.2d 1168, 1171 (8th Cir.1990) (“We would misconstrue [Thorn-burgh, O’Lone, and Safley ] if we deferred not only to the choices between reasonable policies made by prison officials but to their justifications for the policies as well.”); Campbell v. Miller, 787 F.2d 217, 227 n. 17 (7th Cir.1986) (“[Djeferenee to the administrative expertise and discretionary authority of correctional officials must be schooled, not absolute.”). Nor can the judicial role be diminished to the disappearing point solely because the original decisionmaking body in this case is Congress itself rather than the Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”). Cf. Sable Communications of California, Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 129, 109 S.Ct. 2829, 106 L.Ed.2d 93 (1989) (“To the extent that the federal parties suggest that we should defer to Congress’ conclusion about an issue of constitutional law, our answer is that while we do not ignore it, it is our task in the end to decide whether Congress has violated the Constitution. This is particularly true where the Legislature has concluded that its product does not violate the First Amendment.”).3 The Safley standard reconciles prisoners’ constitutional rights with institutional needs and defers to prison administrators as the most appropriate articulators of those needs; so long as Congress acts with those same needs in mind, it is entitled to the same deference. But were we simply to defer to Congress’s assertion that the Ensign Amend*206ment (“the Amendment”) was reasonably related to the interest asserted, there would be no need for judicial review at all, for no statute infringing on inmates’ constitutional rights would fail to satisfy this test. The Court has reminded us that the Safley standard “is not toothless,” Thornburgh, 490 U.S. at 414, 109 S.Ct. 1874 (internal quotation omitted); more precisely, it is not a license for lawmakers, any more than prison wardens, to shortchange the constitutional rights that the Supreme Court has insisted prisoners continue to possess. Only if our assessment is not a cursory one can we give adequate weight to both concerns that underlie the Safley standard. See, e.g., Salaam, 905 F.2d at 1171 n. 6 (“Reasonableness in this context refers not only to the relation between the goals of a regulation and its means, but also to the balance struck between the needs of the prison administrators and the constitutional rights .of prisoners.”).
It is crucial, therefore, to ensure that although the strictness of our review is lessened, it is not eliminated altogether. Our task, ultimately, is to assess the fit between the interest proffered and the remedy adopted — whether the regulation under consideration is a reasonable means of addressing the legitimate penological interest put forward by the government. In Safley itself, for example, although the prison’s asserted interests in security and rehabilitation were sufficient to justify some restriction on the right to marry, the Court held that the particular restriction adopted was too broad to be upheld. See Safley, 482 U.S. at 97-98, 107 S.Ct. 2254 (“No doubt legitimate security concerns may require placing reasonable restrictions upon an inmate’s right to marry, and may justify requiring approval of the superintendent. The Missouri regulation, however, represents an exaggerated response to such security objectives.”); id. at 98, 107 S.Ct. 2254 (“[I]n requiring refusal of permission absent a finding of a compelling reason to allow the marriage, the rule sweeps much more broadly than can be explained by petitioners’ penological objectives.”). In Thornburgh, by contrast, the pre-Amendment version of the restrictions under consideration here were found to represent a reasonable response to institutional concerns because the “individualized nature” of the determinations ensured that the policy would not result in “needless exclusions.” Thornburgh, 490 U.S. at 416-17, 109 S.Ct. 1874; see also id. (noting that even a publication that met one of the criteria for exclusion would be rejected “only if it is determined to meet that standard under the conditions prevailing at the institution at the time”). These cases illustrate that the standard of review established by Safley sets some limits on the means the government may use to further penological interests. Although these limits are flexible, they are by no means as vaporous as the majority rules them to be.
I agree that rehabilitation is, conceptually, a legitimate governmental interest, even if no one is sure how to achieve it and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines have abandoned it as an attainable goal. Compare Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 823, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974) (“[Sjinee most offenders will eventually return to society, another paramount objective of the corrections system is the rehabilitation of those committed to its custody.”) and Dawson v. Scurr, 986 F.2d 257, 260 (8th Cir.1993) (noting that rehabilitation is a “legitimate objective”) with Kerr v. Puckett, 138 F.3d 321, 324 (7th Cir.1998) (“Congress abandoned ‘rehabilitation’ as a justification of imprisonment when it enacted the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.”) and S. Rep. No. 98-225 (1983), at 38, reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3182, 3221 (“[Ajlmost everyone involved in the criminal justice system now doubts that rehabilitation can be induced reliably in a prison setting, and it is now quite certain that no one can really detect whether or when a prisoner is rehabilitated.”). Where the majority and I part company is on the ultimate question: Has any “valid, rational connection” between the extremely broad ban on publications featuring nudity or explicit sexual activity and rehabilitation been shown in this case? And while I certainly do not discount the possibility that a ban more narrowly targeted on certain kinds of violent pornography or even on certain types of prisoners might satisfy this requirement, I cannot conclude, on the *207present record, that these regulations implementing the Amendment pass muster.4
I believe that the determination of whether a regulation (or statute) is reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest must depend, in all but the most obvious eases, on the evidentiary support for that nexus in the record before the court. Of course I recognize too that the question of what or how much evidence is necessary may depend on what logic or everyday experience show us to be the connection between the disputed means and the rehabilitative end. If the Amendment prohibited the distribution of publications containing escape plans, the connection between the ban and the penological interest in institutional security would be obvious, and we could uphold-such a prohibition based on little or no demonstrated evidence. Where, as here, however, the connection (between nudity and rehabilitation) is far murkier, courts (and I would include legislators as well) far removed from the day-to-day operations of a prison are much less able to answer the question accurately on their own; indeed, the very reason that Safley prescribes a great measure of deference,to prison administrators is that they are in the best position to provide answers involving means and ends in prison administration. See, e.g., Kennedy v. Los Angeles Police Dep’t, 901 F.2d 702, 713 (9th Cir.1989) (“The principle that courts must provide wide latitude to prison policies needed to maintain institutional order and security necessarily presupposes that the administrators have crafted those policies with eareful deliberation.”) (citation omitted). We would normally be expected to give a healthy dose of deference to the judgment of prison officials as to their experience and apprehensions in support of a regulation, but where, as in these regulations, these same officials were, so far as we can tell, never consulted on the Amendment’s merits and under its terms áre not allowed to exercise any judgment about what kinds of nudity or sexually explicit material are allowed inside the prison walls, I do not believe Safley permits us simply to assume the existence of evidence showing a connection between the regulation and a rehabilitative goal, as we might under rational-basis review and as the majority has in fact done here.
Safley itself provides a useful example of how too Spartan a record can doom a regulation. The Court’s rejection of the marriage restriction at issue in that case clearly turned on the quality of the evidence before the Court; four times the Court concluded that the regulation was not reasonably related to penological interests based “on this record.” See Safley, 482 U.S. at 97, 107 S.Ct. 2254 (“We conclude that on this record, the Missouri prison regulation, as written, is not reasonably related to these penological interests.”); id. at 98, 107 S.Ct. 2254 (“Nor, on this record, is the marriage restriction reasonably related to the articulated rehabilitation goal.”); id. at 99, 107 S.Ct. 2254 (“Moreover, although not necessary to the disposition of this case, we note that on this record the rehabilitative objective asserted to support the regulation itself is suspect.”); id. (“On this record, however, the almost complete ban on the decision to marry is not reasonably related to legitimate penological *208objectives.”) (emphases added). This repeated qualification of the Court’s negative conclusion about the validity of the regulation starkly suggests that while a reasonable relationship might possibly have been demonstrated between the marriage restriction and the interests asserted, the prison had failed to present sufficient evidence to establish that relationship.
The majority’s apparent conclusion that the government bears no responsibility for compiling evidence to support the breadth of its ban- — in other words, that the courts may simply hypothesize a rational connection— runs counter to the wisdom of several other circuit courts. See, e.g., Shimer v. Washington, 100 F.3d 506, 509 (7th Cir.1996) (prison administration “must proffer some evidence to support its restriction of ... constitutional rights” under Safley standard); Mann v. Reynolds, 46 F.3d 1055, 1061 (10th Cir.1995) (invalidating restrictions on contact visits with attorneys, noting that “defendants were unable to provide any evidence the restrictions on contact were reasonably related to prison security”); Muhammad v. Pitcher, 35 F.3d 1081, 1085 (6th Cir.1994) (invalidating prison mail regulation because “there is no evidence in the record supporting Defendants’ factual claim” that policy was reasonably related to interest in conserving resources); Walker v. Sumner, 917 F.2d 382, 386 (9th Cir.1990) (“Prison authorities cannot rely on general or conclusory assertions to support their policies. Rather, they must first identify the specific penological interests involved and then demonstrate both that those specific interests are the actual bases for their policies and that the policies are reasonably related to the furtherance of the identified interests. An evidentiary showing is required as to each point.”); Waterman, 12 F.Supp.2d at 373 (“To establish that a legitimate penological interest supports a statute, a state must provide evidence that the interest it proffered is the actual basis for the statute.”); Powell v. Riveland, 991 F.Supp. 1249, 1254 (W.D.Wash.1997) (upholding restriction on sexually explicit incoming mail where “[pjrior to implementing the policy, research was done on the effects of sexually explicit material and the policy/regulation was written to target those harmful materials”). In sum, it is clear, as Judge Posner has suggested, that the Safley analysis cannot be met simply on the basis of “pure conjecture.” Reed v. Faulkner, 842 F.2d 960, 963 (7th Cir.1988); see also id. (“[T]o suppose that the wearing of dreadlocks [as an expression of religious belief] would lead to racial violence is, on this record, the piling of conjecture upon conjecture. The potential infringement of the free-speech clause of the First Amendment is too plain to warrant comment.”). Safley certainly does not stand for the proposition that Congress or prison officials may “set constitutional standards by fiat.” Whitney v. Brown, 882 F.2d 1068, 1074 (6th Cir.1989).
I might, therefore, have been able to go along — as the majority does here — with deferring to Congress had the government seen fit to proffer evidence that links a ban on the prohibited publications to rehabilitation or if the connection between that ban and rehabilitation was so self-evident that no further evidence was necessary to demonstrate its reasonableness. But neither event has occurred, and the majority’s once-over-lightly of the scientific literature that does exist certainly does not accomplish the task, as the majority itself admits. See Maj. Op. at 200 (“The point of this is not to suggest that a causal link has been shown. The array of academic authority on the other side is at least as substantial, and quite possibly more so.”). At best, it can be said that a few studies have shown a causative relationship between violent pornography and short-term increases in aggression — perhaps a helpful finding with regard to the security interests of prison authorities but next to useless in determining the effect on any long-term interest in rehabilitation.5 In all other re*209spects, the relationship between pornography and criminal activity is merely correlative,6 and there is no evidence that simply viewing nonpornographic nudity or depictions of sexual activities (as opposed to pornography) has any effect at all.7 See, e.g., Edward Donnerstein, Daniel Linz & Steven PenROD, The Question of Pornography 177 (1987) (stating conclusion of Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography that “in general, the scientific evidence shows no causal relationship between exposure to [nonviolent and nondegrading sexual] depictions and acts of sexual violence” and noting that the authors’ “view of the scientific literature ... is in agreement with this conclusion”); id. at 40-48 (citing studies finding that exposing already angered men to nonviolent pornography can cause a short-term increase in their aggressive tendencies); Ernest D. Giglio, Pornography in Denmark: A Public Policy Model for the United States? in 8 Comparative SOCIAL Researoh 281, 285 (Richard F. Tomasson ed., 1985) (“[A] positive causal relationship between pornography and sex crimes has not been documented by criminologists and psychologists.”); Berl Kutehinsky, Obscenity and Pornography: Behavioral Aspects, in ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CRIME AND JUSTICE 1077, 1083 (Sanford Kadish ed., 1983) (noting that the authoritative studies on the link between pornography and crime have concluded that there is apparently no causative relationship between nonviolent pornography and sex crimes). Indeed, it is unclear even in the studies finding a positive connection between violent pornography and aggressive behavior whether the aggression is due to the violent content of the material or its sexual content. See, e.g., Larry Baron & Murray A. Straus, Four Theories of Rape in AMERICAN SOCIETY 8 (1989) (“It seems reasonable to conclude ... that it is the violent content rather than the sexual content that facilitates aggression.”); Riohard A. Posner, Sex and Reason 368 (1992) (“[T]he effects [of violent pornography] may be due to the violence per se rather than to the erotic component.”). Thus, while it is entirely possible that a narrower publication ban than that accomplished by the Amendment could be supported by the available literature, cf, e.g., Dawson, 986 F.2d at 262 (upholding regulation limiting time, place, and conditions under which certain inmates could view materials), neither the government nor the majority has laid the barest foundation for the far-reaching ban promulgated. The majority’s level of comfort in relying on any statement of any legislator as to what he thinks will encourage rehabilitation as the sole basis for taking away a First Amendment right is very surprising to me, especially since its holding today goes far beyond what any court has previously condoned in depriving prisoners of constitutional rights on the mere assertion of a legislator that he supposes rehabilitation to be so advanced.
In this respect, I believe that it needs to be stressed that the assertion of “rehabilitation” as the reason for impinging on prisoners’ First Amendment rights is particularly disconcerting in its potential for abuse. Unlike its interest in institutional security, the contours of the government’s interest in rehabilitation are quite amorphous and ill-defined. At the most basic level, the goal of rehabilitation might be stated as returning the prisoner to society in a state so that he will henceforth behave in a law-abiding manner, but no one, not even Congress, is so immodest as to claim secure knowledge of how this goal is to be achieved in individual cases, let alone in the aggregate; most often, rehabilitation efforts involve therapy, drug and alcohol counseling, basic education, or job training, but even in these positive attempts, the results *210are far from reassuring. Against that backdrop, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain precisely if or how a particular publication may work to frustrate the rehabilitative goals of prisoners. To start with, there is no consensus on whether in order to transform a law violator into a good citizen, he must be “remolded” attitudinally and instilled with desirable values or whether it is sufficient that he be convinced that further criminal activity would be counterproductive in his own case, whatever his vision of society or the world. Rehabilitation may also be viewed — in the majority’s parlance — as an effort to direct the “character growth” of prisoners by limiting the reading materials to which he has access. See Maj. Op. at 198-199. But, whatever the rehabilitative vision, it should not be possible to proceed on some vague assertion of an interest in “rehabilitation” without the need to define the term or to show a connection between the proscribed activity and the chosen definition; to do so runs an overwhelming risk of overregulation and invasion of the innermost recesses of the human mind and spirit. Indeed, undertaking the Herculean task of “character-molding” is inherently problematic in its First Amendment implications, for it presumably involves casting-emerging prisoners in society’s own image. This, of course, is the antithesis of First Amendment freedoms; indeed, “[tjotalitarian ideologies we profess to hate have styled as ‘rehabilitation’ the process of molding the unorthodox mind to the shape of prevailing dogma.”. Sobell v. Reed, 327 F.Supp. 1294, 1305 (S.D.N.Y.1971); cf., e.g., Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Community Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 511, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731 (1969) (noting “this Nation’s repudiation of the principle that a State might so conduct its schools as to foster a homogeneous people”) (internal quotation omitted). Under this theory, lawmakers who believe that books on Russian history may lead to disrespect for the United States may ban those books for prisoners; lawmakers who hold pro-life views may prevent prisoners from reading publications describing Roe v. Wade; and lawmakers who hold an antiquated view of the role women should play in society may ban the distribution in prisons of publications with feminist themes. Each of these actions could logically be taken in the name of rehabilitation, broadly defined, and each, without doubt, would contribute to a continual evisceration of the First Amendment rights of prisoners. Cf., e.g., Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 565-66, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542 (1969) (“Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.... [I]t cannot constitutionally premise legislation on the desirability of controlling a person’s private thoughts.”); McCabe v. Arave, 827 F.2d 634, 638 (9th Cir.1987) (“Given the strength of First Amendment protection for freedom of belief, prison authorities have no legitimate penological interest in excluding religious books from the prison library merely because they contain racist views.”) (citation omitted); American Booksellers Ass’n, Inc. v. Hudnut, 771 F.2d 323, 330 (7th Cir.1985), aff'd mem., 475 U.S. 1001, 106 S.Ct. 1172, 89 L.Ed.2d 291 (1986) (“If the fact that speech plays a role in a process of conditioning were enough to permit governmental regulation, that would be the end of freedom of speech.”). These examples may sound extreme — they are — but the majority’s rationale easily encompasses them in its umbrella-like authorization for restricting prisoners’ reading material on the basis of a minimum plausibility test for tying the censorship to some vague rehabilitation concept.
Even if the goal of rehabilitation is a more modest one — to convince the prisoner his own best interest lies in avoiding future crime — it is hard to see how that goal is furthered by returning him unequipped to be an intelligent customer in the marketplace of ideas. And while serious questions may well be raised about the value of some of the publications banned under the Amendment, there is much that falls under this broad ban that speaks intelligently to mankind, including prisoners: Michelangelo’s David, for example, or grim photographs of naked bodies piled in the pits of Germany’s concentration camps.8 There is even a potential for such *211depictions of nudity to strike a life-changing chord with some prisoners, a change that should not be prevented from coming to fruition. Malcolm X wrote of his prison experience:
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.... My homemade education gave me, with every book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America.
Alex Haley & Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X 180 (1965).9
If rehabilitation is to be deemed a legitimate penological interest, the term must be given some shape, at least when it collides with fundamental liberties. Of course, as the majority notes, the Constitution has nothing to say about what messages the government may choose to communicate as a speaker. See, e.g., Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 193, 111 S.Ct. 1759, 114 L.Ed.2d 233 (1991) (“The Government can, without violating the Constitution, selectively fund a program to encourage certain activities it believes to be in the public interest, without at the same time funding an alternate program which seeks to deal with the problem in another way.”). Congress or the BOP may make whatever recreational reading it wishes available in the prison libraries without offending the Constitution; they may even provide each prisoner with a tract on the harms of pornography in the hope that some readers will take its lessons to heart. But it is quite a different matter for prisons to deny all access to certain publications in the name of rehabilitation, particularly in such a broad and overreaching manner as this one. If prisoners are to retain any First Amendment rights, the mere assertion of “rehabilitation” as the interest to be served by a particular regulation cannot serve to extinguish those rights altogether.
Because the Amendment and the regulations eliminate the discretion of prison wardens to make individual determinations about how particular publications will affect particular prisoners in particular prison settings, even rehabilitatively, I believe it was incumbent upon the government to point to some evidence demonstrating a connection between all publications that are sexually explicit or that feature nudity and a tendency to engage in criminal or disruptive behavior, keeping in mind that our task is to determine whether such a connection is reasonably likely to exist, not whether one might be conceivable. Cf., e.g., Mauro, 147 F.3d at 1142-44 (considering whether all materials depicting nudity are “reasonably likely” to cause violence or to be used to harass guards). Neither the government nor the majority has pointed to any such evidence.
Indeed, the proposition that all material that is sexually explicit or that features nudity will have a detrimental effect on rehabilitation is belied by the prior actions of the prison officials under the pre-Amendment policy. At that time, prison officials were authorized to prohibit sexually explicit materials that they believed would negatively affect the discipline or “good order” of the institution. Significantly, the prison officials — to whose expertise the Supreme Court has repeated deferred on matters such as this — did not choose to prohibit all material that is sexually explicit or that features nudity. Rather, they evaluated the publications *212individually to determine which ones, in then-expert opinions, posed a potential threat and which did not; indeed, as the majority notes, “explicit heterosexual material” was ordinarily admitted. See Thornburgh, 490 U.S. at 405 n. 6, 109 S.Ct. 1874 (quoting Program Statement 5266.5(b)(2)). It was this “individualized nature” of the determinations that led the Thornburgh Court to conclude that the regulations at issue in that case were rationally related to security interests, the nature of which, like rehabilitation, can change over time.10 See Thornburgh, 490 U.S. at 417,109 S.Ct. 1874 (“We agree that it is rational for the Bureau to exclude materials that ... are determined by the warden to create an intolerable risk of disorder under the conditions of a particular prison at a particular time.”).
Because I believe that, on this record, there is no basis for concluding that there is a rational connection between the interest asserted by the government — rehabilitation — and the restriction chosen to further that interest — a ban on the delivery to all federal prisoners of all publications that are sexually explicit or that feature nudity, I would affirm the decision of the district court. As the majority considers the remaining Safley factors, however, I will also offer a few thoughts.
The second Safley factor considers whether there are “alternative means of exercising the right that remain open to prison inmates.” Safley, 482 U.S. at 90, 107 S.Ct. 2254. Although this right must be viewed “sensibly and expansively,” Thornburgh, 490 U.S. at 417, 109 S.Ct. 1874, it cannot be viewed so broadly as to eliminate any reason for analysis (or as unhelpfully as the majority’s sardonic reference to an “entitlement to smut”). The Thornburgh Court, for example, noted that although the regulation under consideration in that case permitted the warden to make individualized determinations as to each publication, an exercise of discretion that might appear to produce inconsistent results, “greater consistency might be attainable only at the cost of a more broadly restrictive rule against admission of incoming publications,” which “might itself run afoul of the second [Safley ] factor.” Id. at 417 n. 15, 109 S.Ct. 1874. Because the Amendment eliminates a wide variety of publications that feature nudity for artistic or other reasons, prisoners do not have sufficient means of exercising their right to receive many constitutionally protected materials. Cf, e.g., Mauro, 147 F.3d at 1144 (“[I]n direct contradiction of the Supreme Court’s cautionary language in Thornburgh, Maricopa County has enacted a regulation that sweeps too broadly, indiscriminately eliminating large categories of materials without individualized consideration.”).
The third factor considers “the impact accommodation of the asserted constitutional right will have on guards and other inmates.” Safley, 482 U.S. at 90, 107 S.Ct. 2254. Where the institutional interest asserted for a publication ban is security, accommodation of the inmate’s First Amendment rights may indeed cause the “ripple effect” of which the Safley Court warned, see id.; a breach of security with respect to one prisoner is likely to result in other breaches in the prison. In this case, however, there is no evidence by which to judge whether permitting certain inmates to view publications that are sexually *213explicit or that feature nudity will have an adverse effect on the rehabilitation of other inmates. Rehabilitation is a gradual process, and it is entirely possible that any momentary lapses caused by the inadvertent receipt of an inappropriate publication may be reversed with additional rehabilitative efforts. This is not true of security breaches: Once an inmate has received information on how to escape from the prison, he cannot be made to forget it. It thus cannot be concluded, on this record, that accommodation of Amatel’s First Amendment right will have a significant effect on the rehabilitation of other inmates.
Finally, the fourth factor considers whether there are “obvious, easy alternatives” that “fully accommodate[ ] the prisoner’s rights at de minimis cost to valid penological interests”; if so, this may be evidence that the regulation is an “exaggerated response” to prison concerns. Id. at 90-91, 107 S.Ct. 2254. One such alternative comes immediately to mind: the preAmendment policy, under which wardens had discretion to examine each incoming publication and determine whether institutional interests favored its prohibition. The Court’s approval of this policy in Thornburgh eliminates any concerns the majority might have that such a policy would be deemed arbitrary or particularly burdensome; indeed, since prison officials under the current policy must examine each publication to determine whether it is sexually explicit or features nudity, the prior policy arguably represents no additional administrative burden.
Moreover, other aspects of the Amendment suggest that it is indeed an “exaggerated response” to rehabilitative concerns. The Amendment does not allow the warden to take into account whether a prisoner is in a high- or low-security institution, whether a prisoner is male or female, what kinds of crimes the prisoner has committed,11 the nature of the prisoner’s sentence,12 how long the prisoner has been incarcerated and how long he or she has left to serve, whether the prisoner is receiving rehabilitative treatment,13 or even whether a prisoner is in a prison environment that provides an opportunity to share the material with anyone else (particularly with other prisoners convicted of sex crimes). In these respects, the Amendment “sweeps much more broadly than can be explained by [the government’s] penological objectives.” Safley, 482 U.S. at 98, 107 S.Ct. 2254 (invalidating ban on all prisoner marriages by noting that prison officials had experienced no problems with marriages by male inmates or with inmate civilian marriages; the prison’s rehabilitative concern “appeared] from the record to have been centered almost exclusively on female inmates marrying other inmates or exfelons,” id. at 99, 107 S.Ct. 2254, and thus did not account for the ban on other inmate marriages).
*214The majority’s decision to remand this case for further consideration of Amatel’s vagueness challenge leaves a scintilla of hope that this ill-conceived statute will ultimately fail. Because I cannot agree with the majority’s Safley analysis, however, or with its decision to lift the district court’s injunction in the interim, I respectfully dissent.
Conclusion
Justice Holmes once remarked that hard cases make bad law. See Northern Sec. Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400, 24 S.Ct. 436, 48 L.Ed. 679 (1904) (Holmes, J., dissenting). Claims of prisoners to read magazines like Playboy or Penthouse may not be the ideal vehicles for the articulation of First Amendment rights. But, as Dostoyevsky observed, “the degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.” F. Dostoyevsky. The House of the Dead 76 (C. Garnett trans., 1957). Today’s ruling that prisoners may be stripped of rights to view publications of -their choice on the mere assertion of legislators or regulators — far removed from the prison scene and without supporting evidence of any kind — -that those publications will hinder their “rehabilitation” goes well beyond prior precedent and the case law in other circuits. It is a most troubling precedent.

. I find it very significant that two of our sister courts have recently reached results opposite from that set forth by the majority today. In Mauro v. Arpaio, 147 F.3d 1137 (9th Cir.1998), the Ninth Circuit invalidated a county prison system’s ban on the possession of all materials containing "any graphic representation of frontal nudity.” Although the county claimed that its interests in safety, the rehabilitation of inmates, and the reduction of sexual harassment of guards supported such a ban, the court held that the county had not "carried its burden to show that such a far reaching prohibition is 'reasonably related’ to legitimate penological interests”; in particular, it had "offer[ed] no proof or reasoned explanation” for the ban. Id. 147 F.3d at 1142-44. And in Waterman v. Verniero, 12 F.Supp.2d 378 (D.N.J.1998), a district court invalidated a state statute prohibiting inmates in a specialized facility for sex offenders from possessing or obtaining "sexually oriented materials” (defined as any description or depiction of "sexual activity *204or associated anatomical area"; see Waterman v. Verniero, 12 F.Supp.2d at 368 (D.N.J.1998) (preliminary injunction)). Despite the state’s claim that such materials would disrupt the rehabilitation of sex offenders at the institution, the court held that the state legislature that enacted the ban was motivated by public outrage over pe-dophiliac crimes rather than rehabilitative interests. Waterman, 12 F.Supp.2d at 381-82. Moreover, the court noted, the literature on the effects of such publications was too unsettled to support a finding that a rational relationship existed between the ban and rehabilitative interests. Id. In both cases, the courts found the broad scope of the ban, in particular its application to publications featuring nudity, to be unjustifiable in light of any evidence advanced by the government to support it.

. As our Chief Judge has previously noted,
the special place of prisoners in our society makes them more dependent on judicial protection than perhaps any other group. Few minorities are so "discrete and insular,” so little able to defend their interests through participation in the political process, so vulnerable to oppression by an unsympathetic majority. Federal courts have a special responsibility to ensure that the members of such defenseless groups are not deprived of their constitutional rights.
Doe v. District of Columbia, 701 F.2d 948, 960 n. 14 (D.C.Cir.1983) (separate statement of Edwards, J.).

. Of course, because the majority concludes that the BOP's regulations, and not the Ensign Amendment, are controlling in this case, the majority’s focus on Congress’s conclusions may be misguided. See, e.g., Maj. Op. at 199 ("It does not matter whether we agree with the legislature, only whether we find its judgment rational.”). But see note 4, infra.

. The majority characterizes Amatel's attack on the Amendment itself as a "pre-enforcement challenge” that is invalid because, in promulgating implementing regulations, the government has "waived certain provisions of the law." Maj. Op. at 195, citing Salvation Army v. Department of Community Affairs, 919 F.2d 183, 192 (3d Cir.1990). In contrast to Salvation Army, however, we have no "express assurance” that the BOP will not enforce the breadth of the Amendment, cf. Salvation Army, 919 F.2d at 192; indeed, the regulations state simply that "publications containing nudity illustrative of medical, educational, or anthropological content may be excluded” from the definition of "features," see 28 C.F.R. § 540.72(b)(3) (1997) (emphasis added). Moreover, at oral argument, counsel [or the BOP acknowledged that under the current regula-lions, wardens retain considerable discretion as to whether a publication "features” nudity. See Tr. of Oral Arg. at 6. The government’s "waiver” of certain portions of the Amendment thus cannot be so blithely assumed and may in fact be an impermissible narrowing of the Amendment's mandate. See, e.g., Public Citizen v. FTC, 869 F.2d 1541, 1557 (D.C.Cir.1989) ("While agencies may safely be assumed to have discretion to create exceptions at the margins of a regulatoiy field, they are not thereby empowered to weigh the costs and benefits of regulation at every turn; agencies surely do not have inherent authority to secondguess Congress’ calculations.”); Alabama Power Co. v. Costle, 636 F.2d 323, 358 (D.C.Cir.1979) ("Categorical exemptions from the clear commands of a regulatory statute, though sometimes permitted, are not favored.”).

. Of course, the evidence to support a prison regulation need not be in the form of scholarly studies; affidavits from prison officials could also suffice as the basis for analysis. See, e.g., Safley, 482 U.S. at 98, 107 S.Ct. 2254 (testimony of prison officials that they had experienced no problems with the marriages of male inmates relied on as evidence that ban was overbroad); Harper v. Wallingford, 877 F.2d 728, 733 (9th Cir.1989) (finding prison regulation banning receipt of material espousing consensual sexual relationships between male adults and juvenile *209males to be reasonably related to rehabilitation based on affidavit from prison psychiatrist).

. Correlation cannot be sufficient to satisfy Saf-ley's requirement of a “valid, rational connection.” Even if it could be shown, for example, that the majority of those who commit violent crimes are also avid Bible readers, this finding would not constitute a basis for prohibiting all prisoners from reading the Bible.

. By pornography, I mean “a depiction (as in writing or painting) of licentiousness or lewdness: a portrayal of erotic behavior designed to cause sexual excitement.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1767 (1976). There is, of course, much material that features nudity or depicts sexual activity that would not qualify as pornography under any definition, including many highly regarded works of art.

. The majority suggests that the application of the regulations to prohibit artistic depictions of nudity or to documentary photographs of wartime atrocities would be "bizarre.” See Maj. Op. *211at 201-202. But, in fact, even the regulations do not provide for any exceptions to the nudity ban based on a publication's artistic or political content. See 28 C.F.R. § 540.72(b)(3) (providing possible exception only for nudity "illustrative of medical, educational, or anthropological content"). And although the Victoria's Secret catalog and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition are listed by the BOP as permissible publications, the basis for their exclusion from the ban is left to conjecture. Cf. id. § 540.72(b)(2) (defining "nudity" as "a pictorial depiction where ... female breasts are exposed”). As for the notion that explicit descriptions of sexual activities and nudity are still permitted (an illustrated version of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer is banned but a nonillustrated version is not), this only underscores the arbitrariness of the rehabilitative nexus.

. Of course, lawmakers who believe that Malcolm X inspires separatism and racial consciousness may, under the "remolding” theory of rehabilitation, prohibit prisoners from reading his writings as well.

. It should be noted in this respect that a seemingly innocuous publication may be quite detrimental to a prisoner's rehabilitation, depending on the circumstances. See, e.g., Waterman, 12 F.Supp.2d at 367-68, 368-69 (citing concerns of prison officials that pictures of children from the Sears catalog should not be seen by pedophile prisoners).
The need for individualistic determinations when behavior modification is at stake was also a concern in Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210, 110 S.Ct. 1028, 108 L.Ed.2d 178 (1990), in which the Court upheld a prison policy that permitted the involuntary administration of anti-psychotic drugs to inmates, given that the policy was not unnecessarily broad and supported by a wealth of evidence:
Its exclusive application is to inmates who are mentally ill and who, as a result of their illness, are gravely disabled or represent a significant danger to themselves or others. The drugs may be administered for no purpose other than treatment, and only under the direction of a licensed psychiatrist. There is considerable debate over the potential side effects of antipsychotic medications, but there is little dispute in the psychiatric profession that proper use of the drugs is one of the most effective means of treating and controlling a mental illness likely to cause violent behavior.
Id. at 226, 110 S.Ct. 1028.

.For example, the government has provided no evidence on why a ban on nudity is necessary to rehabilitate those convicted of nonsexual and/or nonviolent crimes. I can think of no reason why an embezzler, a tax evader, or a person held in contempt for refusing to testify will be rehabilitated if prevented from looking at publications that ''feature” nudity. (The statements of the only two members of Congress who offered floor comments on the Amendment suggest that their concern was with sex offenders. See 142 Cong Rec. H8262 (daily ed. July 24, 1996) ("[I]f we do not adopt my amendment, we are sending the message that it is OK to provide sexually explicit magazines and books to the very prisoners who have committed violent acts against women.”) (statement of Rep. Ensign); id. ("Far'too often, those individuals convicted of crimes have the opportunity, while in prison, to use materials that glamorize the very acts for which they were convicted.") (statement of Rep. Christensen).)
Moreover, the Amendment's ban may also extend to those inmates who have not yet been convicted but rather are imprisoned while awaiting trial. The government has not suggested any reason for it to take a rehabilitative interest in these individuals, nor do I think it can legitimately do so. See, e.g., McGinnis v. Royster, 410 U.S. 263, 273, 93 S.Ct. 1055, 35 L.Ed.2d 282 (1973) ("[I]t would hardly be appropriate for the State to undertake in the pretrial detention period programs to rehabilitate a man still clothed with a presumption of innocence.”).

. The government would seem to have less rehabilitative interest in, for example, prisoners who have been sentenced to life in prison without parole or to death.

. In some prisons, material featuring adult nudity is an effective part of a rehabilitative program. See, e.g, Waterman, 12 F.Supp.2d at 370-71 (citing evidence that adult pornography may be helpful in turning pedophiles away from child pornography).