CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO — Stanley Schell, a former detainee at the Sainte Genevieve County Sheriff’s Office Detention Center, and current detainees will receive their newspapers again, thanks to a settlement in Schell v. Sainte Genevieve, which was dismissed on May 9, 2013. The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri filed the suit Jan. 2 on behalf of Schell who stopped getting his prepaid subscription to the Ste. Genevieve Herald a week after his letter to the editor of that paper was published. When Schell inquired about his missing paper, he was informed that the sheriff was no longer allowing local newspapers into the jail.
As part of the settlement, Ste. Genevieve County has adopted new jail policies relating to newspaper subscriptions and other written material mailed to detainees. “We are pleased that we were able to get newspapers back into the Ste. Genevieve County jail,” says Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU-EM. “It is a significant victory for detainees that jail policy will now provide both senders and recipients of censored material notice and the opportunity to challenge jail censorship decisions.”