Bridges Not Walls: Building the Future of Journalism in and about Americans Prisons

Panel from the Bridging the Gap: Amplifying Incarcerated Voices in Chicago, IL    • Bridging the Gap: Amplifying Incarcerated ...   Udi Ofer (moderator), Andrew Manuel Crespo, Moira Marquis, Corinne Shanahan, & Phillip Vance Smith II --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Texas, incarcerated journalist Jeremy Busby has been held in solitary confinement for months for his reporting on prison corruption; in Alabama, a journalist was banished from an execution for bringing a notepad and a pen into the death chambers; in California, a prison official denied tours to journalists after 30,000 incarcerated people joined a hunger strike to protest conditions inside. Like all essential journalism, journalism in and about American prisons is under constant threat. Following the rise of mass incarceration and the subsequent decline in prison newspapers, prison officials have all but managed to close prisons off from public view. Those looking to cover prisons, from inside or out, grind up against censorship, retaliation, and lack of critical resources. And yet, these reporters, particularly those who are incarcerated, have long managed to bravely get their stories out. Their work, shared in forms ranging from Substack blogs and contraband cellphone footage to New York Times op-eds and multi-part investigations, has helped to expose horrific conditions inside and, most importantly, make change possible. Now, as ICE officials deny elected officials and the press the ability to see inside increasingly dangerous immigration detention facilities, the work of reporting on American confinement is facing renewed attention. This panel will discuss how we can address some of the main barriers to this work: from advancing radical policy interventions to shifting industry norms, we hope to explore how we can build a future for this field of journalism so that people inside and out may know and address what is really happening behind bars and barbed wire. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This conference is co-organized by Look2Justice, Empowerment Ave, Institute to End Mass Incarceration, Inquest, and Haymarket Books, with generous support from ACLU National, Center for Just Journalism, Press Forward Chicago, David Rockefeller Fund, Freedom to Grow, Galaxy Gives, Jewish Currents, No More Alabama, Prison Journalism Project, Social Documentary Network, Solitary Watch, TruthOut, Unlock the Box, and Vital Projects Fund.