IN PART, the dearth of coverage may result from how hard it is to report what goes on in prisons. Reporters can only gain access to people and information by going through the institution, which enjoys substantial control over the process. Right now, reporters must send written requests for interviews to Latini, who has at his disposal a list of reasons to accept or deny them. Requests can be denied if the prisoner in question "is awaiting action or under investigation" — a restriction open to interpretation. Requests may also be rejected if they disrupt the "orderly operation of a correctional institution" — another restriction susceptible to broad definition. Often, reporters must haggle for weeks before landing an interview. If access becomes a hassle, they may give up.

"Officials make it incredibly difficult to cover prisons," says Beaubien, who recently left his post at WBUR to freelance for National Public Radio. "The Boston media has been beaten down by the lack of access and the process."

During Beaubien's coverage of the Shirley shakedown (and other prison-related stories), DOC officials made it hard for him to do his job. Requests for interviews fell into a bureaucratic abyss for weeks — only to be eventually rejected. Those that were accepted required Beaubien to meet inconsistent, seemingly random, conditions. Sometimes, he was limited to interviewing prisoners only over the phone. Other times he was allowed to conduct face-to-face interviews on tape. Still other times, he could see the prisoner but could not use a recorder. Today, Beaubien wonders if his reporting on the MCI-Shirley lockdown landed him on a blacklist. When he heard about the seven prisoners in Walpole segregation units who had been assaulted by guards, he wrote the prisoners letters, in which he introduced himself as a reporter eager to tell their tales. Each of his letters was returned unopened with RETURN TO SENDER stamped across the front.

Freelance journalist Rathbone tells similar stories. It took her seven months and the filing of a lawsuit to gain access to about a dozen prisoners incarcerated at MCI-Framingham, though they had already agreed to speak with her. Even after she won a court order gaining access to the prisoners, Rathbone has had to wait hours at a time before being allowed to enter the visiting room. She’s been subjected to "random" full-body searches. And she’s been turned away at the door after guards requested to see a prisoner’s consent form or, she says, "some other previously unnecessary piece of paperwork."

Latini takes issue with the claim that the department is a closed institution. In his two years as spokesman, he has granted interviews with prisoners to the Globe, the Herald, the AP, and 20/20, among other media outlets. "Requests come in on a regular basis," he says. (In April 1999, 20/20 aired a disturbing episode on Charlie Chase, the state prisoner serving at least 15 years in the Departmental Disciplinary Unit because of his violent outbursts and his own self-mutilation, which is a punishable offense.) When asked how many reporters file requests versus how many get inside, Latini initially replies, "I don’t have statistics." But less than an hour later, he calls back. The department, he reports, has received 15 requests for prisoner interviews since January 2002. All but one, he says, were approved. "The implication is that we deny all media requests coming into the facilities, and we don’t," he argues.

Latini contends that the DOC’s proposals won’t keep the media out of prisons. The pending restrictions, he notes — specifically, the bans on cameras, tape recorders, and interviews with prisoners in isolation — apply only to 15 of the 22 DOC facilities. Prisoners in minimum-security facilities — who made up 11 percent of the prison population as of January 1, 2001 — "won’t be affected at all by these regulations," he asserts. As for the rest, he argues, they can still communicate with the press via the phone and letters. Of course, waiting for a collect call from a prisoner, whose phone use is limited in the first place, or relying on the mail aren’t practical means of communication for media outlets operating on a daily news cycle.

LATINI GIVES three reasons for the new media guidelines: industry trends, preventing security breaches, and maintaining the privacy of crime victims. "Most states have restrictions and bans on interviewing prisoners," he explains, citing Arizona, Idaho, and Pennsylvania as examples. And in the Northeast, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York restrict press interviews of prisoners conducted via the phone. "We’re just following the trend," Latini says, even as he admits that "there was no problem in the first place" with the existing guidelines.

It’s true that the DOC proposals mirror media policies implemented elsewhere. According to Charles Davis, who directs the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, prisons have imposed unprecedented restrictions on prisoners’ contact with the press — and thus with the public. In 1998, Davis authored the report "Access to Prisons" for the Society of Professional Journalists, a national trade organization. He surveyed prison media policies in 50 states. Thirty-nine states (not including Massachusetts) responded to questions. Even four years ago, the results proved troubling. Six states had a ban on face-to-face interviews with prisoners; today, that number has risen to nine. Of the 39 states, 32 said they allow media interviews with prisoners. Yet 14 of them granted less than half the requests. "This is all familiar," Davis says, upon viewing a copy of the Massachusetts DOC proposals.

At the same time, the proposed regulations in this state may break new ground. One of the more "odious" innovations, as Davis puts it, is a little-noticed amendment tacked onto the existing list of reasons the DOC can accept or deny media access. If these proposals are enacted, requests will depend upon "whether such access would result in a significant benefit to law-enforcement agencies." The implication is that journalists who write positive pieces will be granted access, while others will not. "This is a line few states are prepared to cross," Davis says, "because [officials] are saying, ‘We’ll predicate access based on whether you’ll write something good about us.’ "

The DOC’s proposed guidelines most resemble those currently in place in California. In 1998, following a series of damaging articles about human-rights abuses taking place within the state penal system, California’s correctional department revoked 30-year-old regulations permitting the media to conduct face-to-face interviews and exchange confidential correspondence with prisoners. The biggest story involved events at Corcoran State Prison, where eight prisoners were killed and dozens wounded in shootings from 1988 to 1998. A federal inquiry found that guards were staging gladiator-style fights in the prison yard among rival gangs for their own amusement. If prisoners didn’t beat themselves to a pulp first, the guards would fire. Eight guards were later indicted for engaging in "blood sport."

In Massachusetts, by contrast, the motivation behind the draconian provisions seems to be a desire to control the message — or discourage coverage altogether. Latini insists the proposals are not about trying to manage what’s reported about the DOC. "I cannot see how anyone can say we’re trying to control the message," he says. But history speaks for itself. In 1967, Cambridge filmmaker Frederick Wiseman riveted the nation with his documentary Titicut Follies, which exposed deplorable conditions at Bridgewater. The film depicted scene after scene of prisoners naked and confined to barren cells. Many spent their days wandering aimlessly through the halls without supervision or treatment. Though the DOC promised sweeping changes, it went to court to suppress the movie in Massachusetts for 20 years — ostensibly, because the film invaded prisoners’ privacy. But the effect of the ban was to stifle critical examination of a system that badly needed it. Under the new proposals, this type of documentary wouldn’t be possible at Bridgewater — or at any of the 15 facilities where cameras are banned.

What about security concerns? "Look nationwide and you can see some instances that have happened with inmates trying to receive contraband [from] the media," Latini says. When asked for examples, he responds, "I won’t be specific." When asked to cite the last time a Massachusetts reporter caused a security incident, he reiterates: "I’m not going to point to anything specific." A Nexis search did not yield any examples in the past five years of reporters who caused a security breaches in prisons in this state or nationwide.

The DOC, as the AFSC’s Suarez notes, "falls back on the concept of security to deny anything it feels like denying." Several years ago, in fact, advocates had to fight the department to allow elderly prisoners more than the standard one roll of toilet paper per week. "I kept getting, ‘This is a security issue. They might clog the toilet,’" she recalls. How clogging the toilet would constitute a security issue, as opposed to a plain nuisance, is anyone’s guess.

The DOC's third rationale for the new regulations — protecting crime victims' privacy — is not as easy to dismiss. Here, Latini invokes the story of Benjamin LaGuer, who was convicted of raping and beating his 59-year-old neighbor in 1984. LaGuer has become one of the best-known prisoners in this state because he learned how to cultivate the press. For the past 19 years, he’s written and called reporters proclaiming his innocence. When DNA tests on newly discovered evidence confirmed LaGuer’s guilt last March, many journalists were left with egg on their faces. Yet all the while, says Latini, "The family of his victim has had to re-live his crime over and over again."

It’s a legitimate point. But there’s an equally compelling counterpoint: Joe Salvati. In 1993, WBZ reporter Dan Rea first heard about Salvati’s claim that he’d been wrongfully convicted for a murder committed in 1965. Eventually, after four years of digging, his investigation brought two new witnesses forward to refute claims of Salvati’s guilt. Salvati was freed from prison in 1997, and, in December 2000, previously hidden FBI documents proved his innocence. Despite his solid journalistic instincts, Rea took heat for pursuing the story. "It’s not an easy road to be a reporter who calls into question the legitimacy of a conviction," he says. That road should not be made harder simply because of victims. "Anyone in prison who is innocent or wrongfully convicted deserves coverage," Rea insists. "Their stories cry out for attention."

IN THE END, the debate over the DOC proposals is unlikely to result in revisions. After DOC commissioner Michael Maloney weighs the testimony submitted at the June 14 hearing, he is expected to pass along the proposed regulations to the state Administration and Finance Department, which must sign off on them. Theoretically, the finance department could force the DOC to alter the language. But given the Swift administration’s tough-on-crime attitude, that probably won’t happen.

On the legislative front, legislators who oppose the proposals could try to trump the DOC effort. State Representative Patricia Jehlen (D-Somerville), who is one of 26 House members who oppose the proposals, tells the Phoenix that if they are implemented she will file a bill to "guarantee the press’s right to access" to the state’s prison system. Still, a legislative victory doesn’t seem promising, considering the DOC’s sway at the State House. One bill that would hold the DOC accountable by establishing a civilian review board, for example, has languished on Beacon Hill since the mid 1980s. Another, aimed at preventing the DOC from punishing prisoners for acts of self-mutilation and attempted suicide, died last year. Even a bill that would have required review of state-prison health-care and mental-health services by a board of physicians was buried in committee several years ago — never to surface again. In fact, one of the only pieces of prison-related legislation to muster support at the State House is a highly punitive measure, tacked onto the fiscal-year 2003 House budget, that would force prisoners to pay $5 per day over the course of their incarceration.

In the small world of people who care about prison issues, a state of resigned frustration has set in. Only the media, they say, have the power to fight the pending restrictions with any success. It’s happened before. In an exception to the rule of recent media apathy toward prison issues, media groups whipped into action and blocked access restrictions proposed in 1999 by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Advocates in this state could witness the same outcome — if only news outlets speak to their own interests. As Dianne McLaughlin, a Boston paralegal who has worked on prison issues for 36 years, puts it, "This is not our fight to win. It’s the press’s fight."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com