Juan Rios became a gang member when he was 11 years old. He started his first prison sentence at 19. Years later, after being released, he kept gang-banging. Then, at age 24, he shot three people ...

These stories claim to celebrate resilience. But sometimes they distract from the deadly consequences of poor nutrition behind bars.

Coping with the demeaning and adversarial nature of prisons is taxing. Prison is loud. Violence breaks out. People are disruptive. For all of these reasons and more, prison causes mental, physical and ...

This cartoon is of a prison guard as a sheepherder. We’re the sheep. One main task of guards is to count the prison population. Count happens multiple times per day. This act is like a shepherd ...

In my Missouri prison wing, food is being hoarded, mental health is declining, and our families visit us less frequently or provide us with less financial support — in part because of policies made ...

Luigi Mangione was incarcerated at my Pennsylvania prison, SCI Huntingdon, for close to two weeks in December. Here's what we saw.

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Nothing in prison is soft and cuddly. Prisons are concrete and steel and stocked with hard people doing hard time ...

I came to prison when I was 15. Now I’m 34. Behind bars, I've found peace with myself. Even in prison, I find blessings and witness beauty.

Four years ago, my younger brother Isaac, then 32, was sentenced to 19 years in prison. His crime was carjacking and accessory to murder. I can still see my elderly parents, overcome with grief, ...

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. I was waiting for chow at my prison, choking. It wasn’t from food, or another inmate. It was anger lodged in my ...

After 13 years in a Missouri prison, this veteran describes his first day on the outside as a period of radical (but exciting) adjustment.

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Just a few days after my article about the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ refusal to provide me and other prisoners ...