We Train Prison Journalists to Change the Narrative About Mass Incarceration Prison Journalism Project is an independent, national nonprofit organization that trains incarcerated writers to be ...

Nothing in prison is soft and cuddly. Prisons are concrete and steel and stocked with hard people doing hard time. Toughness is mandatory, brutality a virtue, as we resist — are forced to resist — the ...

For more than half of my life, I have not been free. I was sent to prison when I was 15 years old for second-degree murder, a crime I truly regret. I began my sentence at Thumb Correctional Facility, ...

I remember the first day I stepped foot inside a prison. It was 1995. The place was eerie and intimidating. I was 20 years old and thought I might die. But it didn’t take long for me to discover that ...

Dutch “ was hip-hop in narrative form. Many books released afterward mimicked the same features, but Teague’s book was the first of its kind and dug deeper than surface gangster glam stories told by ...

When you consider the age of New York prisons, the lack of cooling makes sense, in a way. The state has four maximum security prisons that were built in the 1800s: Auburn Correctional Facility (1818), ...

Arkansas is one of eight states, alongside Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas, that makes inmates do hard labor for free. I’m at Cummins Unit in Grady, Arkansas ...

It should surprise no one that incarcerated people struggle during the holidays. Despair and loneliness, regret and self-loathing — these emotions characterize the experience of many people inside ...

Chris Jacobs was 16 when he robbed a store. The man with him shot someone to death there, later took a plea bargain, and became eligible for parole in December 2020. Jacobs, however, is now in his ...

I smirked at the sight of Dot’s diminutive form, with tattooed face and sleeved-out arms, there in the middle of the pen. He seemed so out of place — a gang-banging, inner-city cowboy! The man ...

A warehouse will be converted into classrooms, a computer room, library and a small cafe for students at one prison.

Next, we were loaded onto a modern white bus with large, tinted windows. It was the size of a touring bus, like those used for musicians and sports teams. The bus was divided into three sections, each ...