Photo credit goes here P R I S O N An issue written, illustrated and photographed by currently and formerly incarcerated Americans Warning: This graphic requires JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript for the best experience.

The Prison Issue

Piper Kerman of 'Orange Is the New Black': America has normalized prison

A prolific prison journalist on his hardest assignment: Writing a letter to the family of the man he killed

Personal essays and art from currently and formerly incarcerated Americans

Prisons and jails are designed for men. Can we build a better women's prison?

This man was just released from prison after serving 15 years. A photographer documented his reentry.

My GPS-tracked life: A photo essay about being electronically monitored on parole

The trials of life after prison: Short fiction from Mitchell Jackson

At top: Art by C. Fausto Cabrera. The illustration imagines Cabrera as a child holding his later-life mug shot. Image enhancement by Kinga Britschgi.

Editors’ note

America incarcerates more people than any other nation. As a result, the stark realities of jails and prisons have a far-reaching impact on society. With this special issue — written, illustrated and photographed by people who have been or are currently incarcerated — our goal was to help readers learn about the experience of imprisonment, something that is poorly understood by Americans who are untouched by the system.

Several of the writers in this issue are established reporters, but many were contributing to a national publication for the first time. To find these contributors, we put out a call for pieces through groups that work with incarcerated writers — Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop, PEN America and Truth Be Told — as well as through the classes of writer Piper Kerman. We received more than 100 submissions, and eventually selected eight writers to work with. To find illustrators, we collaborated with four groups that work with incarcerated artists: the Community Partners in Action Prison Arts Program, the Justice Arts Coalition, Minutes Before Six, and Black and Pink.

There are many perspectives and voices that are not in this issue — most notably, those of crime victims. Nothing in this issue should be taken to minimize their suffering. They deserve frequent and prominent coverage, as The Washington Post provides. But at a time when the subject of prison reform is receiving more attention than it has in decades, this special issue seeks to inform the conversation by focusing on American prisons and the lives of the people inside them.

— Richard Just, Alexa McMahon, Whitney Joiner