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 ...

On February 8, 2022, about an hour before the 6:30 a.m. morning count, an announcement rang out over the loudspeakers at New Jersey State Prison. It was an emergency code, a “Code 53,” indicating a ...

"I get really frustrated at the treatment of the elderly," writes Amy McBride, 61, who is incarcerated in Pennsylvania. "It’s a long walk to the medical clinic and twice as long as that to the dining ...

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 ...

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 ...

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), ...