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How a project is training incarcerated people to become journalists

Julia Métraux

January 26, 2021 |

Poynter |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

In its first year, the Prison Journalism Project published hundreds of articles by more than 140 incarcerated writers in 28 states. The project provides journalism-skills training and then a platform for the work of incarcerated journalists. This delivers news and viewpoints that otherwise would not be heard by outsiders, spreading awareness of prison conditions and empowering often-ignored people to tell their stories.

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Inmates are learning to be their own bosses after they leave jail behind

Chase DiBenedetto

January 24, 2021 |

Mashable |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Charlotte, North Carolina

Inmates to Entrepreneurs has graduated 1 million people from its eight-week program that teaches incarcerated people how to start their own low-capital businesses. An extension of a free online entrepreneurship course, Starter U, the program offered in-person workshops until COVID forced it to go virtual. One study shows the unemployment rate in December 2020 for formerly incarcerated people was more than 27%, more than four times higher than the general public. Inmates to Entrepreneurs was started 28 years ago in North Carolina's prison system.

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Zoom Funerals, Outdoor Classes: Jails and Prisons Evolve Amid the Pandemic

Keri Blakinger

January 19, 2021 |

The Marshall Project |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

When the pandemic forced jails and prisons to ban educational classes and cut off visits between outsiders and their loved ones behind bars, some jailers opened their facilities to remote-learning and -visiting tools. The result is a boom in the use of video conferencing for literacy classes, vocational training, family visits, and even to enable incarcerated people to attend family funerals. Some advocates for the incarcerated worry that in-person interactions could permanently be replaced by video, even after the risk of viral infection has eased.

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Pandemic Boosts Effort to Improve Inmates' Welfare

Evidence Chenjerai

January 14, 2021 |

Global Press Journal |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Zimbabwe

As part of the coronavirus lockdown in Zimbabwe, people were banned from visiting prisons, but a mobile app has allowed relatives to send supplies to those who are incarcerated via their cellphone. This newest initiative in the succession to reform the prison system uses mobile money to send supplemental goods from the prison’s tuck shop to relatives who are incarcerated.

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Firefighter jobs difficult to find for women fire crew after prison

Catie Cheshire Sinead Hickey Miles Green

January 12, 2021 |

Cronkite News - Arizona PBS |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Arizona

Arizona's Inmate Wildfire Program trains incarcerated people to fight wildfires, paying them low prison wages to provide a critically needed service as wildfires grow more common. Members of the only all-female crew, from Perryville Prison, tell of their pride of accomplishment in doing a dangerous job, and of the rehabilitative benefits of the program. They also describe their frustrations when regulations often bar them from using their skills after release from prison.

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Revolving door in Montana corrections still turning, despite reforms

Phoebe Tollefson

January 04, 2021 |

Helena Independent Record |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Montana

A set of criminal justice reforms enacted in Montana in 2017 that were meant to reduce incarceration and reinvest some of the savings in crime prevention programs has had little effect on the prison population. The state's "justice reinvestment" program, using a model adopted in 30 other states, has failed to put plans into action, partly for a lack of public spending on programs for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. As a result, the prison population is tracking where it would have been had nothing been done, and recidivism remains high.

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These gardens ask visitors to reconsider solitary confinement

Anna Deen

December 23, 2020 |

Grist |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, New Orleans, Louisiana

Solitary Gardens is an art project that protests prisons' solitary confinement conditions. Incarcerated people connect with volunteers on the outside who plant flowers, vegetables, or herbs in beds matching the tiny dimensions of the prison cell that confined Herman Wallace for a record 41 years in Louisiana. The people inside prison imagine their garden, often with memory triggers of what they have lost, and their gardener carries out their plan. The idea is to make a place for grief, healing, public service, and public education, as the gardens in four cities teach about solitary confinement.

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How Cook County Jail Became the Country's First Jail-Based Polling Place

Kiran Misra

October 30, 2020 |

Belt Magazine |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

As the first jail to serve as a polling place for the people incarcerated there, the Cook County Jail saw the highest number of votes cast in a primary election in decades during the spring primary. On two weekends of early voting for the fall general election, more than 2,000 people cast their ballots, nearly 40% of the jail's population. In jail, in-person voting has several advantages over mail-in voting, which in the past was the only option, as at all other jails. Because most people held there have not been found guilty, they are eligible to vote. Illinois also allows same-day registration.

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We can't vote in San Quentin prison. So we held a mock election

Juan Moreno Haines Kevin Deroi Sawyer

October 28, 2020 |

The Guardian |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, San Quentin, California

Two men incarcerated at San Quentin prison tell how the men incarcerated there held a mock presidential election, despite a pandemic-related lockdown and prison officials' failure to distribute ballots that had been sent to the prison. Using handwritten ballots, the "voters," denied their actual voting rights by the state, managed to cast 176 mock votes (heavily favoring Joe Biden) by distributing the ballots during limited time outside their cells. Voting gave the men the opportunity to express their views, not just by checking a box but by adding comments on their ballots.

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Ballots Behind Bars

La Risa Lynch

October 24, 2020 |

The Crisis Magazine |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

Chicago Votes works to ensure access to voting for people awaiting trial in jail. In addition to registering thousands of voters, they helped pass a Cook County law designating the nation’s largest single-site detention facility as a polling place. This access enabled 1,850 people to cast their votes and about 600 people were able to take advantage of same-day registration and voting, which isn’t possible with traditional absentee ballot voting. Addressing jail-based disenfranchisement, which disproportionately impacts communities of color, gives people a voice in policies that directly impact them.

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