A 1996 law that prohibits tax dollars from being used to distribute pornography is being used to argue against the distribution of porn to prison inmates.

Under the 1996 Ensign Amendment, federal tax dollars cannot be used to pay a prison employee to deliver porn to inmates, even if the prisoner requested and paid for the material. A federal district court in Denver recently denied a challenge to the law — and Pat Trueman, special counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund and former chief obscenity prosecutor for the Justice Department, believes that was a good idea.

“They’re in prison to be rehabilitated and to be punished for their crime,” he notes, “and withholding pornography is probably a very good idea. It’s a lot easier to rehabilitate them if they’re not becoming pornography addicts or sexual addicts in prison.”

Trueman claims that if prisoners are fed a “steady diet of this kind of foul material” it will have an adverse effect on them when they are released back into society.

The former prosecutor says prisoners face other First Amendment restrictions, such as not being allowed to demonstrate against their living conditions and not being able to choose the clothing they wear. And Trueman says inmates certainly do not have a constitutional right to receive sexually explicit materials — and especially not at a cost to taxpayers.