Defending Prison Journalism

No one understands prisons better than the intrepid journalists working inside of them to share their lived reality with the broader public. Of the hundreds of essays published at Inquest since 2021, roughly a quarter have been penned by incarcerated authors. Through these voices—and the related advocacy work of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration (IEMI), which publishes Inquest—we have seen up close the barriers prison journalists regularly confront.

In autumn 2025, IEMI launched a new project aimed at identifying promising legal interventions that would improve conditions for prison journalism—with a broader goal of ushering a series of Prison Journalism Bills of Rights into law. Inquestis pairing that advocacy work with this series, Defending Prison Journalism, where incarcerated journalists across the nation, alongside experts and activists working to support them, will share essential insights into the challenges at hand and the path forward.

New content continues to be added to the series. Subscribe to our newsletter to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Prison Journalism Is a Disinfecting Light. That’s Why Prisons Suppress It.

A new initiative on prison journalism from IEMI aims to restore prison transparency and First Amendment rights for incarcerated journalists.
Andrew Crespo & Premal Dharia

What Is the Role of the Prison Journalist?

A former editor-in-chief of a prison newspaper examines the responsibility of prison journalists, the constraints they work under, and why reporting from inside matters.
Phillip Vance Smith II

“I Want to Find the Connectedness in Everyone.”

The nation’s best-known prison journalist discusses his book ‘The Tragedy of True Crime’ and the challenges faced by those who write from inside.
John J. Lennon interviewed by Adam McGee

“We have journalists every place in the world except in prisons.”

Incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell discusses his recent book on solitary confinement, and what it would take to level the playing field for incarcerated writers.
Christopher Blackwell interviewed by Adam McGee

The Prison Spectacle

Reality TV turns suffering in prison into entertainment—and takes up bandwidth for legitimate prison journalism.
Vidal Guzman

When Reporting Is a Crime

States have restricted, surveilled, and punished prison journalism for decades, with dire consequences—for incarcerated people and for democracy.
Corinne Shanahan & Andrew Crespo

A Narrative of Control

Mass incarceration rests on false narratives that carceral institutions themselves control. But some of us are fighting back.
Lyle C. May

Asymmetrical Partners

Activism must involve incarcerated people—but few outside advocates really understand the dangers and limitations that imprisoned organizers face.
Ivan Kilgore, Paula Lehman-Ewing & Glenn E. Martin

What’s in a Name?

Being forced by prison authorities to publish anonymously caused me to reflect on the long history of Black authors choosing names in response to state violence.
Alexander Bolling

No First Amendment for Prison Journalists

The law has constructed a regime in which incarcerated journalists are silenced & punished for telling the truth about what happens behind these walls.
Ivan Kilgore

Speaking Power to Power

An increased visibility of prison journalism is vitally necessary, though it alone will not turn the tide of a sclerotic, brutal political system.
Dan Berger

Destroying the Conditions that Make Speech Possible

Blocking reading materials and censoring writing are both ways that prisons erase expression before it can reach an audience.
Stevie Wilson

Under the Warden’s Eye

For over two centuries, prison publications have produced an unflinching archive of U.S. punishment and resistance.
Kristine Guillaume

This is How I Report from Solitary Confinement

Two years after I was placed in solitary for my reporting, a wave of drug overdoses swept through Texas prisons. I followed the story from my cell.
Jeremy Busby

The Guard Tower I Had to Redraw

Drawings made in prison can express what policy language cannot. Perhaps that’s why the institution keeps such a close watch on the artists.
Adam Roberts

_{Image: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, “The Gothic Arch,” plate 14 from Imaginary Prisons. Etching and engraving on heavy ivory laid paper, 1761. In the collection of the Art Institute Chicago (public domain)}