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

Prisons are the United States’ dirty secret. No other public institution matches the scale of their oppressive violence. And no other public institution is so entirely cut off from public view. Prisons are built in remote locations, shielded behind wire and walls, and utterly severed from society’s truth-seekers—its journalists, its documentarians, and its scholars—and from the families and loved ones of those inside.

This secrecy directly enables mass incarceration. Today, U.S. prisons incarcerate nearly 1.2 million human beings, warehousing them in institutions purposefully shielded from the public, and thus from any meaningful public accountability.

We are proud to announce that Inquest and its publisher, the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, are launching a new project, Defending Prison Journalism. Our goal is simple: To expose prisons to the disinfecting light and power effective journalism can offer, and to thereby help the public understand what truly happens inside the institutions that inflict punishment in our collective name. We will do this by working with incarcerated journalists—including authors Inquest readers already know well—to help craft and push into law prison journalism bills of rights, statutes that will empower journalists inside of prisons and outside to hold these public institutions to account. And working with a coalition of partners, we will work to support and protect these journalists as they carry out their vital work. We are also launching today a newInquest series exploring the many challenges confronting incarcerated journalists.

With our emphasis on publishing the work of incarcerated writers, Inquest has always seen greater prison transparency as critical to the work of ending mass incarceration. And as a publication produced by the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, an advocacy organization dedicated to helping lawyers and organizers—including those directly impacted by mass incarceration—work to eradicate root causes of the system’s harms, we understand the central role that law reform and collective advocacy play in bringing about needed change.

We are proud to be supported in this important work by the generosity of Liz Simons of the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Ervin Family Trust, and other committed backers of the Institute’s work. And we feel privileged to partner with One for Justice and the impact team working to increase awareness of the power of prison journalism alongside the release of the new HBO documentary The Alabama Solution, which premiers today, October 10.

From directors and producers Andrew Jarecki (The Jinx) and Charlotte Kaufman, The Alabama Solution is a shocking exposé of deadly conditions inside of Alabama’s prisons—and of the sustained efforts to keep them hidden from view. Among the film’s unique features, a considerable portion of its footage was shot inside Alabama’s prisons by incarcerated journalists using contraband cell phones. Two of the film’s principal narrators, Robert Earl (Kinetic Justice) Council and Melvin Ray, were leading architects of the Free Alabama Movement and central organizers of the 2022 Alabama statewide general work stoppage in prisons. Without the ability to see what they saw inside of prisons and to hear their uncensored voices, the atrocities they report—and the tireless organizing by incarcerated people to force change—would never have come to light.

Inspired by the brave willingness of the film’s incarcerated participants to risk everything to make the public aware of what is being done in Alabama’s prisons, and in conjunction with the Institute to End Mass Incarceration’s accompanying advocacy campaign, Inquest’s contribution to the project will include a new editorial series exploring the challenges faced by incarcerated journalists, and what it would take to transform their conditions and bring transparency to these public institutions. The core of the series will be work from incarcerated journalists themselves, as well as legal experts and activists. 

Stay tuned in coming weeks for the official launch of this series, which will continue through the remainder of 2025 and beyond.

_{Image: De an Sun / Unsplash}

Contributors

Andrew Manuel Crespo Andrew Manuel Crespo is Coeditor-in-Chief and a founding editor of Inquest, a professor at Harvard Law School, and the executive faculty director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration

Premal Dharia Premal Dharia is Coeditor-in-Chief and a founding editor of Inquest and the executive director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration.

Topics

• Decarceral Pathways

Tags

• conditions of confinement
• Defending Prison Journalism
• first amendment
• incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors
• journalism
• prison journalism