Why Prison Journalism: More Trouble Than It's Worth?
In the fall of 2024, I was transferred to Neuse Correctional after serving 14 years at Nash. Both are medium-custody prisons but vastly different. Nash has cells. Neuse's cellblocks are overcrowded open dorms with 60-75 men crammed in on rusty bunk beds. Nash offers a plethora of education and job opportunities that draws the state's most intelligent and well-behaved. At Neuse, men lounge around all day watching TV because there's nothing else to do, which creates a volatile and violent environment.
When I left Nash, I left friends I had known for a decade. Getting on the transfer bus, labored by shackles, made me feel like a slave ripped away from his family at the auction block. I didn't mind going to a different prison. I hated leaving my friends.
Before leaving Nash I worked as editor of The Nash News (TNN). I was also treasurer of the service club. I had organized hygiene drives for the secular humanist group to donate items to a women's shelter. I had coauthored a proposal for what would become the state's first statewide prison publication in a century, The North Carolina Prison News Today, and I served as editor-in-chief for the inaugural issue. I hadn't accrued an infraction in 12 years. Nash's administration had more reason to keep me there, to keep making a difference, than to shuttle me off to purgatory.
Despite my accomplishments, prison officials saw me as a troublemaker. Nah ... I didn't peddle dope, try to get a guard to smuggle in cellphones, or head an organized crime syndicate, but I was a threat all the same because I am a prison journalist.
To date, I have published in dozens of reputable publications, such as Bolts, Slate, HuffPo, and the NC Law Review, to name a few. Every one of my pieces examines a carceral injustice that directly impacts me. One prison guard once asked me, "Do you ever write anything positive about prisons?" His question was irrelevant because I write to expose problems within the prison system.
As a Black man who has been serving life without parole for over two decades, I am in the best position to identify how the system fails people. I don't have a college degree backing me. I can't access prison records. But I have something much better: lived experience inside the belly of the beast. I see the results of failed policies, exorbitant prices for prison services, and I have mourned the deaths of friends who might still be alive if prison medical staff had done their jobs. I wish I could write positive things about prison, but the scale of injustice is greatly weighed down by the negative.
Another guard once told me, "You're gonna get somebody fired." I felt bad because that wasn't my aim. I hoped to educate the public about an underreported place, no more, no less.
So I understand why I was transferred from Nash. Since then, I have continued to write, focusing on injustices faced by people I serve time with. There is no shortage of hardship in North Carolina's prisons. Because I continue writing, I will be transferred again and again and again. I am the proverbial wolf in the hen house. No prison will want me there for long.
Prison journalism has more drawbacks than benefits. I always feel crosshairs following my every move. And the funny part is that I never wanted to be a journalist.
I have always been attracted to storytelling. My first attempts at writing were pitiful fiction novels that I wrote from the confines of a prison cell. I call them pitiful because I had no idea how to write a story back then. I always knew that I was missing something, but what that something was, I had no idea. So I became an autodidact, ordering and studying what books I could find. I taught myself grammar, syntax, and structure.
In 2015, I joined TNN as a secretary. At the time, I worked as a graphic designer in a print plant, where TNN was produced. The print plant allowed us to design the newsletter in our free time with software we used for work. It was printed on overstock paper with ink from completed jobs. My friend Lewis was TNN's graphic designer and he needed help typing articles. I joined TNN to help Lewis, not to write.
The TNN staff of 15 met every Saturday in the Unit Four classroom from noon until three. We discussed the latest gossip and story ideas over cups of tepid coffee. Each journalist explained what they wanted to write, and we all offered suggestions to flesh out their ideas. As a novice writer, TNN was the best thing that could've happened to me.
Gary, our editor, recognized my writing talent and asked me to cover events. Mostly he gave me puff pieces. I wrote articles about the Islamic community's Ramadan feast, the Fourth of July field day, and the volunteer banquet. TNN journalists rarely tackled controversial topics, and we never challenged the prison or carceral system because we were heavily censored. Each issue had to be approved by the warden or a subordinate before printing. They wouldn't allow anything that made the prison look bad. Administrative scrutiny created a fear factor, forcing Gary to preemptively strike down problematic article ideas.
Being constrained bothered me. My friend Smittie James died from cancer. He'd been complaining about health ailments for a year or more, but the prison's medical staff didn't take him seriously. If they'd caught his cancer when he started complaining, he'd still be alive. The censorship TNN operated under wouldn't allow me to tell the truth about what happened to Smittie. So someone else wrote a piece celebrating his life and work in the print plant. It was a good article, but it didn't tell Smittie's real story.
I continued teaching myself writing, but my efforts shifted to narrative nonfiction. The more I learned, the more my ideas about journalism broadened. I began seeing journalism as a form of social activism. It informed the community — whether free or incarcerated — about issues that should be important to them.
As a young prisoner, rebelliousness dictated my actions. When a guard told me to do something, and I refused, I thought I was standing up for myself. I had friends who assaulted guards and ended up in the hole for years. Guys who organized sit-downs were transferred to worse prisons. My experience taught me that rebellion and violence changed nothing. They only made one's situation worse.
I saw journalism as an avenue to promote change within a system of oppression. With journalism, my words could resound louder than any war cry.
My first published journalism piece appeared in The Humanist, an atheist magazine. I wrote about how my friend Kwame successfully sued the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction (DAC) with the help of the American Humanist Association (AHA) to force state prisons to recognize Secular Humanism as an approved religion. I had previously published a first-person essay about being an incarcerated atheist in the same magazine.
There was nothing controversial about the report. Kwame and I were members of the AHA, the organization sponsoring The Humanist, and I thought we were a part of the community. But shortly after publication, The Humanist sent me a letter saying it would no longer publish the full name of incarcerated people. Instead of my byline reading Phillip Smith, it would read Phillip S. I hated that. Recognition for my work was all I received from The Humanist. I didn't ask for or accept money. Kwame and I reasoned that someone in the AHA (most likely a donor) didn't like the organization dedicating resources to help convicted murderers join the club. All their high-falutin' talk about "inclusion" excluded the incarcerated, it seemed.
Kwame wrote a response slamming the humanist community for giving in to pressure when the core principle of secular humanism claimed to treat all humans the same, and that meant recognizing mistakes we made in our past. The Humanist published a heavily redacted version of Kwame's response on its Letter to the Editor page, but they labeled him Kwame T. instead of printing his full name.
I never wrote for The Humanist again. However, the experience taught me the power of words. Shining a light on Kwame's lawsuit had repercussions, sure, but what I wrote changed the way The Humanist operated. It didn't matter that the change worked against us. Such words carried power.
In the following years, I published small articles in small publications. My peers took note of my journalistic prowess and shoved me through the ranks of TNN. I served as graphic designer, assistant editor, and then editor after the staff voted me into the spot in 2021.
As editor, I pushed TNN journalists to write more meaningful articles. I still had to censor content to a degree, because we wouldn't be allowed to publish some topics, but I asked them to write about issues they cared about. If I couldn't write something for TNN, I wrote it for the free world.
Honestly, I didn't like being a leader in prison. Such a role demanded subservience, and that never suited me. I'm not the type of person who portrays an image of something he's not. Some may call that a character fault, but it's me. What you see is what you get. I cared more about the mission than the position.
To make our staff better journalists, I taught writing workshops. I sat down with each journalist to discuss changes in their draft instead of making them myself. I demanded excellence, because that was the standard I set for myself, too.
In return, I made sure they were recognized for their work. In 2022 I sent an issue of TNN to Ithaka, the parent company of the online library JSTOR, to see if it could be included in their American Prison Newspaper Collection. Anne, the collection's curator, wrote back with a delightful yes. She asked for back issues. I sent as many as I could, and five months later, TNN appeared on JSTOR for the world to see. Recognition came with a price, though.
The warden went nuclear when he found out. I was questioned on why I had submitted TNN without permission. I explained that I didn't need permission. None of us had signed release forms relinquishing ownership of our writings. That meant we still owned the rights to our work. The prison couldn't tell us not to publish it.
I never heard anything other than gossip that the prison staff thought I was getting too big for my britches.
Instead of slowing down to keep the heat off me, I ramped up my writing. I published wherever I could and wrote whatever a publication asked for. I joined Empowerment Avenue, an advocacy group that supports prison journalists with volunteers and resources. My volunteers Jon, Giulia, and Emily helped me pitch and publish articles that I never would have been able to place without them. They sent research and emailed editors for me. If I was a man with no arms, they were my hands. I wouldn't be who I am without them.
Not everyone was enthusiastic about my writing.
In 2023 I published an Op-ed in HuffPo detailing understaffing and overcrowding at Nash. I identified those problems as catalysts for violence and pointed out how lawmakers could fix them. The piece wasn't out a full day before guards were approaching me about it.
A few weeks later, an assistant warden caught me in the gym and said, "I don't want to end up in one of your little articles."
I tried to assure them that I wasn't aiming to take Nash down. I wrote to illuminate systemic issues beyond a single prison's control. Regardless, I walked away knowing my days at Nash were numbered.
When I was transferred to Neuse a year later, I wasn't surprised. I can't call moving me a retaliation, but more of a prevention.
On the yard one day, weeks before the transfer, my friend Troy summed up the situation perfectly. "See, you one 'dem uppity negroes. You don't know your place as a prison slave. You too smart to control, so they'll get rid of you. They know how to stop the gangbangers and dope dealers. They can lock them up. But they can't lock up your mind. To them, that make you much more dangerous.”
Prison journalism has been a curse and a saving grace. It has made me see the world for what it is and caused me a world of trouble. I don't mind being at Neuse. It's wild and violent, but I've survived worse prisons. I've been incarcerated for 23 years. Prison time is what I do best. Besides that, I'm a minor celebrity. I hadn't been in the cellblock for 30 minutes before guys were asking about my writing. Many had seen my picture in TNN or heard about me. I was in a new place, but it felt like home.
I could have been more submissive at Nash. But at what cost? Staying there would have meant silencing my voice. Behind prison walls, my voice is all I have.
It doesn't matter if they transfer me to the moon.
Seeking prison reform in the age of mass incarceration through journalism is well worth the trouble.