Defending Prison Journalism
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.
TOPICS
Institutions & Practices
UNDERSTANDING HOW CARCERALISM OPERATES
206 posts in ‘Institutions & Practices’
A closer look
The Commissary Giant That Won’t Open Its Books
Lucrative public contracts and high-priced commissary goods let corporations like Keefe profit from incarcerated people’s hunger—and leave taxpayers in the dark.
Beyond Reform
What a Prison Reform Tour Can’t Show
Ivanka Trump’s visit to Indiana Women’s Prison spotlighted coding, sewing, and second chances—but left inhumane living conditions out of view.
Defending Prison Journalism
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.
book review
No Medicine, No Nothing
Rebecca M. Rodriguez Carey’s ‘Birth Behind Bars’ examines how the state regulates incarcerated mothers’ bodies. Reading it, I found language for my own trauma.
Defending Prison Journalism
Under the Warden’s Eye
For over two centuries, prison publications have produced an unflinching archive of U.S. punishment and resistance.
A closer look
Pathways Beyond Criminalized Crisis
This week, Inquest presents three short films from Represent Justice’s 2026 Ambassador Films collection, each exploring the far-reaching harms of incarceration.
In Depth
The Post-9/11 Surveillance Payday
How the pretext of homeland security birthed a public–private tech surveillance economy that makes billions in profit every year.
Policing
How Police in São Paulo and LA Keep People “Black, Poor, & Peripheral”
An international study of policing in Brazil and the U.S. highlights how racial and economic exclusion are enforced through violent state practices.
A closer look
“I Want to Know Who’s Responsible for This Man’s Health”
In Missouri prisons, people with cancer say lifesaving treatment is often delayed and denied by a private contractor, leaving incarcerated patients and their families to shoulder the caregiving.
first person
Virginia’s Prisons Have a Dog Problem
In the past decade, hundreds of incarcerated people have been attacked by guard dogs in Virginia’s prisons, often seriously. I'm one of them.
Policing
A Union Apart
Stuart Schrader’s ‘Blue Power’ illuminates the history of how police unions coalesced as tools for guaranteeing preferential treatment and protection from accountability.
Beyond Reform
Reclaiming Social Work from the State
From crime bills to family policing, reforms have bound social work to punishment. Holistic defense offers a path to realign the profession.
A closer look
The Elderly “7-Ups” Enduring Indefinite Incarceration
Nearly 200 people are serving indefinite sentences in California. These are some of their stories.
Defending Prison Journalism
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.
interventions
The Art of Mothering Through Bars
For incarcerated mothers, sending handmade art to their children can help nurture vital connections—but often even this is hindered by prison officials.
interventions
When the Judge Used to Wear Blue
Data reveals that judges with law enforcement backgrounds are more likely to order pretrial detention and set high bail. In other words, judicial appointments are jail policy.
first person
Getting Short
To imagine closeness to freedom is to invite disappointment. To speak optimism aloud in prison is to make yourself vulnerable.
Defending Prison Journalism
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.
first person
Making Our Own Change
There’s a general disinterest within the prison system in the rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals. This is cruel, and it is shortsighted.
Defending Prison Journalism
No First Amendment for Prison Journalists
The law has constructed a regime in which incarcerated journalists like myself are silenced, punished, and disappeared for telling the truth about what happens behind these walls.
Institutions
Serving Time in Public Schools
Every year, thousands of children are placed in solitary confinement by U.S. public schools as punishment for having a disability. This abuse and abandonment must stop.
Policing
Force Multipliers
ICE could never have created a large-scale deportation machine if it hadn’t enjoyed the voluntary assistance of local law enforcement.
Defending Prison Journalism
Lighting the Black Box
Prison writing has often been the spark that lights the flame of political awareness among the incarcerated population and their outside allies.
first person
A Certain Darkness
Solitary confinement steals bites from the mind, heart, and soul every day, without you even realizing it. Eventually these stolen bites equal a whole piece of you gone.
activism
“Time Is So Precious”
Organizer Pedro Figueroa recounts working while being held in immigration detention, where he earned as little as $1 a day and helped to organize historic labor actions against for-profit prison…
first person
Bare It All
This isn’t my first strip search during my incarceration. This, however, is the first time it’s being filmed.
A closer look
Inside America’s Most Secretive Supermax Prison
Colorado’s ADX is designed to hold people under conditions of the most extreme deprivation. Despite this, the men imprisoned there continue to fight for their rights and freedom.
A closer look
Inside Georgia’s Youth Detention Crisis
Even as crime falls in Georgia, the state pours vast resources into abusive youth facilities that disproportionately harm Black children, according to our investigation.
A closer look
Punishing Through Bureaucracy
An obscure policy claimed to reward me for doing the work of rehabilitation—by sending me back to a high-security prison.