PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -Prison officials would be able to bar the news media from interviewing inmates, inspect reporters’ notes and sit in on interviews with reporters under proposed regulations being considered by the state corrections department.

Critics said the new draft policy is overly restrictive.

The proposed policy would allow prison officials to deny interviews if they believe the report could be insensitive to crime victims. There is no criteria for how insensitivity would be decided.

Currently, prison officials are barred from reviewing any notes, photographs or video footage taken at the prison. The draft policy would delete that provision.

Steve Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union, said the regulations under consideration are much more restrictive than the current rules.

“The new proposal takes a very different stance and puts the Department of Corrections, in many respects, in the role of censor,” Brown said.

Department spokeswoman Tracey Poole said that was never the intent. She said the department’s media policy has been in place since 1987 and that it was time to be revised. She said the proposals were subject to change after a public hearing on Monday.

She also said the department was simply putting in writing practices that, for the most part, it already does.

“We really try very hard to be very supportive of the media and to work with the media,” she said. “I think we have a director who is very open to that.”

Poole said Rhode Island’s prison system was much less restrictive in dealing with the media than corrections departments in other states.

The proposals outline several criteria that prison officials can use in choosing to grant or deny an interview request. One criterion is that “the media report is sensitive to the feelings and needs of crime victims,” which Brown called vague. He also said inmates would be less candid in interviews if a prison spokesperson were required to be present the entire time.