Incarceration in the United States
- Sheridan Libraries
- Guides
- Incarceration in the United States
- First Person Accounts
A guide for the course Unlocking Knowledge: Theorizing Prison from the Inside (Spring 2023).
Incarcerated Writers
- American Prison Writing Archive at Johns Hopkins UniversityThe mission of the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA) is to replace misrepresentation of prisons and imprisoned people with first-person witness by those living in legalized confinement.
- American prison newspapers, 1800-2020 : voices from the insideOn March 24, 1800, Forlorn Hope became the first newspaper published within a prison by an incarcerated person. In the intervening 200 years, over 450 prison newspapers have been published from U.S. prisons. Some, like the Angolite and the San Quentin News, are still being published today. American Prison Newspapers will bring together hundreds of these periodicals from across the country into one collection that will represent penal institutions of all kinds, with special attention paid to women's-only institutions. Development of the collection began in July 2020 and will continue through 2021, with new content added regularly.
- PrisonPandemicBy providing a digital archive of stories, UCI PrisonPandemic™ is bringing greater transparency to the COVID-19 crisis in prisons. Made up of faculty and students at the University of California, Irvine, it is an ongoing initiative to collect stories from people incarcerated in California prisons, their family members and loved ones, and the staff/employees who work in these facilities. We will continue to add more stories as we receive them. If you use any material from this site, please reference or link to prisonpandemic.uci.edu. In creating PrisonPandemic, our hope is that the archive will outlive the COVID-19 pandemic and serve as a resource for understanding the unequal toll of the prison system in the United States.
- Between the Bars: Human Stories from PrisonA weblog platform for people in prison
- Marshall Project Inside Life series“Life Inside” is a weekly series of first-person essays from people who live or work in the criminal justice system.
- Prison Journalism ProjectPrison Journalism Project provides incarcerated writers with the tools and training to establish themselves as credible journalists, so they can meaningfully particiapte in the decision making processes that impact them and their communities.
- Prisons from the Freedom ArchivesThe Freedom Archives contains over 12,000 hours of audio and video recordings which date from the late-1960s to the mid-90s and chronicle the progressive history of the Bay Area, the United States, and international movements. We are also in the process of scanning and uploading thousands of historical documents which enrich our media holdings. Our collection includes weekly news, poetry, music programs; in-depth interviews and reports on social and cultural issues; numerous voices from behind prison walls; diverse activists; and pamphlets, journals and other materials from many radical organizations and movements.
- Washington Prison History ProjectThe Washington Prison History Project is a multimedia effort to document the history of prisoner activism and policy in our state. The site features a robust collection of prisoner-produced newspapers from the late 20th century; oral histories and testimonials about the Washington state prison system; research on local histories of punishment; and a text-adventure computer game designed inside a maximum security prison.
- Silenced: Voices from Solitary in MichiganA growing collection of letters from people in solitary confinement.
- Journal of Prisoners on PrisonsSince 1988, the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP) has been a prisoner written, academically oriented and peer reviewed, non-profit journal, based on the tradition of the penal press. It brings the knowledge produced by prison writers together with academic arguments to enlighten public discourse about the current state of carceral institutions. This is particularly important because with few exceptions, definitions of deviance and constructions of those participating in these defined acts are incompletely created by social scientists, media representatives, politicians and those in the legal community. These analyses most often promote self-serving interests, omit the voices of those most affected, and facilitate repressive and reactionary penal policies and practices. As a result, the JPP attempts to acknowledge the accounts, experiences, and criticisms of the criminalized by providing an educational forum that allows women and men to participate in the development of research that concerns them directly. In an age where `crime` has become lucrative and exploitable, the JPP exists as an important alternate source of information that competes with popularly held stereotypes and misconceptions about those who are currently, or those who have in the past, faced the deprivation of liberty.
- Black and PinkThe Black & Pink National Newsletter has been distributed free of charge to a rapidly growing list of incarcerated LGBTQIA2S+ members and incarcerated members living with HIV/AIDS around the country since 2010! Each issue is full of pieces submitted by our incarcerated members; relevant news, history, and opinions from our non-incarcerated community; and reflections from our national Executive Director.
- Prison Radio: CommentariesCurrently incarcerated people are able to submit their voice recordings as part of the Prison Radio Commentaries section, and figures such as Pitt Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Krystal Clark, and others discuss important issues affecting prisoners in the United States.
Books
Interrupted life: experiences of incarcerated women in the United States by ISBN: 9780520944565Publication Date: 2010-01-25Interrupted Life is a gripping collection of writings by and about imprisoned women in the United States, a country that jails a larger percentage of its population than any other nation in the world. This eye-opening work brings together scores of voices from both inside and outside the prison system including incarcerated and previously incarcerated women, their advocates and allies, abolitionists, academics, and other analysts. In vivid, often highly personal essays, poems, stories, reports, and manifestos, they offer an unprecedented view of the realities of women's experiences as they try to sustain relations with children and family on the outside, struggle for healthcare, fight to define and achieve basic rights, deal with irrational sentencing systems, remake life after prison; and more. Together, these powerful writings are an intense and visceral examination of life behind bars for women, and, taken together, they underscore the failures of imagination and policy that have too often underwritten our current prison system.
Fourth city: essays from the prison in America by ISBN: 9781609173975Publication Date: 2014-02-01At 2.26 million, incarcerated Americans not only outnumber the nation's fourth-largest city, they make up a national constituency bound by a shared condition. Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America presents more than seventy essays from twenty-seven states, written by incarcerated Americans chronicling their experience inside. In essays as moving as they are eloquent, the authors speak out against a national prison complex that fails so badly at the task of rehabilitation that 60% of the 650,000 Americans released each year return to prison. These essays document the authors’ efforts at self-help, the institutional resistance such efforts meet at nearly every turn, and the impact, in money and lives, that this resistance has on the public. Directly confronting the images of prisons and prisoners manufactured by popular media, so-called reality TV, and for-profit local and national news sources, Fourth City recognizes American prisoners as our primary, frontline witnesses to the dysfunction of the largest prison system on earth. Filled with deeply personal stories of coping, survival, resistance, and transformation, Fourth City should be read by every American who believes that law should achieve order in the cause of justice rather than at its cost.
The sentences that create us: crafting a writer's life in prison by ISBN: 9781642596540Publication Date: 2022-01-11The Sentences That Create Us draws from the unique insights of over fifty justice-involved contributors and their allies to offer inspiration and resources for creating a literary life in prison. Centering in the philosophy that writers in prison can be as vibrant and capable as writers on the outside, and have much to offer readers everywhere, The Sentences That Create Us aims to propel writers in prison to launch their work into the world beyond the walls, while also embracing and supporting the creative community within the walls. The Sentences That Create Us is a comprehensive resource writers can grow with, beginning with the foundations of creative writing. A roster of impressive contributors including Reginald Dwayne Betts (Felon: Poems), Mitchell S. Jackson (Survival Math), Wilbert Rideau (In the Place of Justice) and Piper Kerman (Orange is the New Black), among many others, address working within and around the severe institutional, emotional, psychological and physical limitations of writing prison through compelling first-person narratives. The book's authors offer pragmatic advice on editing techniques, pathways to publication, writing routines, launching incarcerated-run prison publications and writing groups, lesson plans from prison educators and next-step resources. Threaded throughout the book is the running theme of addressing lived trauma in writing, and writing's capacity to support an authentic healing journey centered in accountability and restoration. While written towards people in the justice system, this book can serve anyone seeking hard won lessons and inspiration for their own creative--and human--journey.
Breathe into the ground: PEN America 2020 Prison Writing Awards anthology by ISBN: 9798701436228Publication Date: 2021-01-29The 2020 anthology, titled Breathe into the Ground, is an impressive collection of poetry, nonfiction, and drama from incarcerated writers in the United States. This year, we include personal letters from the writers about their experience during the pandemic, and we introduce the PEN America/L'Engle-Rahman Award in Mentorship with moving letters from our mentorship pairs. Also included is original artwork accompanying pieces provided by incarcerated artists through the Justice Arts Coalition.
Solitary : unbroken by four decades in solitary confinement. My story of transformation and hope by ISBN: 9780802129086Publication Date: 2019-03-05FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement--in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana--all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived was, in itself, a feat of extraordinary endurance against the violence and deprivation he faced daily. That he was able to emerge whole from his odyssey within America's prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the U.S. and around the world. Arrested often as a teenager in New Orleans, inspired behind bars in his early twenties to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living, Albert was serving a 50-year sentence in Angola for armed robbery when on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were accused of the crime and immediately put in solitary confinement by the warden. Without a shred of actual evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice that gave them life sentences in solitary. Decades passed before Albert gained a lawyer of consequence; even so, sixteen more years and multiple appeals were needed before he was finally released in February 2016. Remarkably self-aware that anger or bitterness would have destroyed him in solitary confinement, sustained by the shared solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the grinding inhumanity and corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. He survived to give us Solitary, a chronicle of rare power and humanity that proves the better spirits of our nature can thrive against any odds.
Corrections in Ink by ISBN: 9781250272850Publication Date: 2022-06-07"Brave, brutal . . . a riveting story about suffering, recovery, and redemption. Inspiring and relevant." --The New York Times An electric and unforgettable memoir about a young woman's journey--from the ice rink, to addiction and a prison sentence, to the newsroom--and how she emerged with a fierce determination to expose the broken system she experienced. Keri Blakinger always lived life at full throttle. Growing up, that meant throwing herself into competitive figure skating with an all-consuming passion that led her to nationals. But when her skating career suddenly fell apart, that meant diving into self-destruction with the intensity she once saved for the ice. For the next nine years, Keri ricocheted from one dark place to the next: living on the streets, selling drugs and sex, and shooting up between classes all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell. Then, on a cold day during her senior year, the police caught her walking down the street with a Tupperware full of heroin. Her arrest made the front page of the local news and landed her behind bars for nearly two years. There, in the Twilight Zone of New York's jails and prisons, Keri grappled with the wreckage of her missteps and mistakes as she sobered up and searched for a better path. Along the way, she met women from all walks of life--who were all struggling through the same upside-down world of corrections. As the days ticked by, Keri came to understand how broken the justice system is and who that brokenness hurts the most. After she walked out of her cell for the last time, Keri became a reporter dedicated to exposing our flawed prisons as only an insider could. Written with searing intensity, unflinching honesty, and shocks of humor, Corrections in Ink uncovers that dark, brutal system that affects us all. Not just a story about getting out and getting off drugs, this galvanizing memoir is about the power of second chances; about who our society throws away and who we allow to reach for redemption--and how they reach for it.
Podcasts
- Ear HustleEar Hustle launched in 2017 as the first podcast created and produced in prison, featuring stories of the daily realities of life inside California’s San Quentin State Prison, shared by those living it. Co-founded by Bay Area artist Nigel Poor alongside Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams — who were incarcerated at the time — the podcast now tells stories from inside prison and from the outside, post-incarceration. In 2019, Rahsaan “New York” Thomas joined Ear Hustle as a co-host inside San Quentin.
- The Freedom Takes from the Million Book ProjectThe Freedom Takes is a podcast from the Freedom Reads, produced for listeners in prison and out, that explores the relationship between literature and freedom. Freedom Reads was founded in the knowledge that in a world with prison cells, freedom can begin with a book. On the show, poet, lawyer, and founder of Freedom Reads, Reginald Dwayne Betts talks to some of the authors of these books about their lives as writers and as readers, and about what it means to them to be free.
Interviews
- Visiting Room ProjectA digital experience that invites the public to sit face-to-face with people serving life without the possibility of parole to hear them tell their stories, in their own words. More than five years in the making, the site is the only collection of its kind, containing over 100 filmed interviews with people currently serving life without parole.
- Frederick Douglass Project for JusticeThe Douglass Project seeks to bring prisoners and community members together for face-to-face conversations that highlight our shared humanity.
Programs in prisons
To Say Their Own Word prison program collection
Between 1979 and 1980, Marshall "Eddie" Conway (1946-2023) helped organize a prisoner's educational outreach program called, "To Say Their Own Word," a 50-week program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Correctional Libraries of the Maryland State Department of Education, where thinkers and scholars came to Maryland Penitentiary to speak about topics like U.S. fascism, the prison-industrial complex, capitalism, increased surveillance, and other issues. While incarcerated, Conway and other prisoners worked closely with librarian Brenda Vogel, who wrote the grant that funded the "To Say Their Own Word" project. Brenda Vogel was one of the project directors, along with Eddie Conway, a former member of the Black Panther Party and political prisoner during that time.
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