I overcame PTSD after fighting in war, but I had no encounters with other mental illnesses until I helped people in crisis at my prison.

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 ...

In her nine years working in a mental health unit of the Washington State Penitentiary, S. Acosta has seen some horrific things. She has worked with prisoners who have cut off their own body parts, ...

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 ...

Claire Tak is a storyteller and writer with a background in editorial marketing for tech companies. Her connection to the prison system began when her younger brother Isaac was sentenced to 19 years.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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), ...