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, ...

The weight deck, where we exercise at the Washington State Penitentiary, is not hospitable to vegetation. Sunbaked gravel and decades of dumbbells dropped from prisoners’ hands make it the last place ...

No one who knows me from the free world would ever believe that I resorted to using heroin. I was never a party animal, and I didn’t need to use drugs to enhance my natural good vibes. But now it’s ...

This story is a Kite, a special category dedicated to first-person reports that rely heavily on a writer’s first-hand observations and experiences. Read more about why PJP uses this category here.

There is not much I can do to control my situation at my prison. For example, I can’t choose to come and go from my cell when I want. Rather than let these restrictions defeat me, I remain optimistic ...

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 ...

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 ...

Hairnet snowman Another way to make a mini-snowman uses a white hair net — the kind used by kitchen workers. Remove the elastic and cut it in two pieces; set aside. Lay the hairnet flat, then place ...

Everything was cold, gray and hard. The lights were too bright or too dim, but always tinted in a yellow haze. It would have been easy to mistake being processed in a Los Angeles jail as a dream — no, ...

I remember Dad once found a rare wooden cradleboard wedged between two rocks, likely left more than a century before. He made his discovery known to what was then called the Southwest Museum of the ...