Horace Lane was an early nineteenth-century working-class prisoner-author. Unlike fellow early-nineteenth-century prisoner-author William Coffey, Lane didn’t grow up within the social and intellectual elite. Like Coffey, Lane sought to expose injustices and reform prisons through writing a book. Like Coffey, Lane had little influence on public policy and lived in poverty. For authors, the inspiring ideal of authoring public works has tended to obscure the typical, actual effects of doing so.

Lane grew up in impoverished circumstance and lacked formal education. He was born in 1789 in a farm family in Lanesborough, Massachusetts. Lane’s family moved to Stillwater, New York, a small town on the Hudson River, a year after Lane was born. When Lane was six, his mother died. From age six to ten, Lane lived and worked apart from his family as a child laborer for a farmer, a shoemaker, a country storekeeper, and a clothier. At age ten, he joined the U.S. Navy. He went to sea as a “ship’s boy.” In the navy he endured strenuous conditions, severe floggings, and combat with pirates and the British. He was impressed at least three times into the British navy.^

Lane spent many years in many different prisons. In 1812, after a British man-of-war captured his ship, he endured three months in a British prison ship moored in Bermuda. From about 1815 to 1819, he served four years in a Dutch prison for stealing furniture and participating in a drunken brawl. After returning to the U.S. about 1824, he served fifteen months in the Simsbury mines in Connecticut for breaking into a house and stealing. He was released from that prison spell in February 1826. In May, 1827, he was convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to three years of hard labor in the Auburn State Prison. Soon after he was released, he was convicted of burglary and theft. In December, 1830, he entered Sing Sing State Prison to serve a two-year sentence. Upon release from Sing Sing, Lane was given “two dollars, and a suit of old clothes that would scarcely hang together.”^ Lane was forty-three years old. He was already an old man who had suffered much and gained little. His family and social connections were long attenuated. He had no formal education outside of prison. His body was failing from alcoholism and brutal life experiences. He had no skills that would help him to get more than a low-paying job.

Lane became an author. About 1835, he wrote a twenty-four-page pamphlet, “Five Years in State’s Prison; or, Interesting Truths , Showing the Manner of Discipline in the State Prisons at SingSing and Auburn, Exhibiting the Great Contrast Between the Two Institutions, in the Treatment of the Unhappy Inmates; Represented in a Dialogue Between SingSing and Auburn. By Horace Lane, a Discharged and Penitent Convict.” Lane described repeated beatings to force him and other Sing Sing prisoners to work harder:

{a prison official} sent me after large sledge, and set me to breaking up rocks, but it was so heavy I could not swing it: then I got it, the keeper would come and give me five or six raps with his cudgel every half hour, says he, “I’ll learn you how to act the old soldier.” Oh! how I longed for night; and in the morning my bones would ache so I could hardly stir.^

He also described prison officials selling prisoners’ provisions for pigs’ feed and leaving prisoners starving:

I was so hungry that I would watch every chance I could get, to pull up some grass or weeds, to eat; this is the truth, and there was enough others did so too, while the assistant keeper was selling barrels of provision for swill.^

Weakened by the brutal work and poor food, Lane was beaten for staggering while he and other prisoners were marched in formation to work:

You know how they {the prisoners} have to march, one after another, close together, so as one’s belly touches the other’s back; and we had a long hill to go down three times a day. I was so lame in my bones I could not steady myself, and I would stagger and tumble on the others, and then I would get two or three raps over the head with a cudgel. I could not help but cry almost all the time, and the more I cried, the more they beat me.^

Prison reform was a major public issue at that time. Lane’s pamphlet was a sensational, personal account of experiences highly relevant to public discussions of prison reform.

Lane’s pamphlet was also a stirring evangelical testimony in a culture where such testimonies attracted considerable attention. Lane experienced life among the dying. While serving in the navy, Lane participated in battles involving cannon and gun fire. Lane was a prisoner in Sing Sing when a cholera epidemic struck the prison in July and August, 1832. Most of the prisoners became ill, and roughly ten percent died. Lane wrote, “I counted nine, and seven, and five or six a day {dying}, for a fortnight.”^ Lane declared:

I am a standing monument of singular mercy. When numbers were dropping down around me, when instruments of death were rattling thick around me, like the hail from the thunder cloud, and falling like drops of rain, I was preserved among the gasping, groaning, and dying.^

Lane publicly acknowledged and repented his sins. He praised God for mercy and goodness, and urged readers to do likewise. He drew upon his personal experiences as an alcoholic in an extended figurative comparison urging readers to pray:

If you never prayed before, now, before you shut this pamphlet, if you have no disposition {to prayer}, pray God to give you a spirit of prayer. If man never had an inclination to drink strong drink, yet he may get into company where they are drinking, and he may think they feel wonderful well through their jollyness, and be tempted to take a little; and the first glass will create a desire for another, and so he goes on till he gets to be a perfect drunkard: just so you may suppose the Christians, when they get together to worship God, and drink in largely of his heart-reviving Spirit, must feel well, and so they do ^

The temperance movement and revivalist Christianity were powerful social currents in antebellum America. These currents encompassed a far larger group of potential readers than those interested in prison reform.

Lane vigorously promoted sales of his pamphlet. He recorded in his autobiography:

There was no small excitement drawn into operation in the minds of the people, when, with a large literal showbill, I commenced selling my stigmatizing pamphlet about the streets and markets of the city. It was not long before I could hear the boys in all directions crying out, “Five years in State Prison! here comes Five Years in State Prison!” This was truly humiliating to the natural man; and had it not been that I was in straitened circumstances, I think my pride would have overcome my desire to do good.^

Having to promote themselves to potential readers has been an enduring source of humiliation for many authors. This author had actual personal experience relevant to an institution with major public significance. That didn’t change the necessity of promotion:

I was bold to attest to the truth of the above pamphlet, as being my own experience. Some were so swelled up with haughty disdain, that they said, (seldom without an imprecation or an oath,) “You ought to go back, and stay there for life.” It was hard for me to keep from retaliating; sometimes I got off my guard, but generally kept in mind that humility is better than pride.^

On the street one day, some gentlemen put to the author this proposition:

what would I take to read one of the pamphlets through? I made them no answer; they offered me, I think, twenty-five cents. I thought I could do it in less than an hour, and that would be good wages; but the condition was, that I was to mount, and stand on a pile of codfish, and in the form of an orator perform the task. … They stalked the money; I mounted; the force of my agitations produced the cold sweat, but I read on; while they, observing my firmness, purchased a pamphlet, left me the twenty-five cents, and retired.^

In one form or another, many authors face similar challenges. Successful authors re-enforce their status by encouraging others to attempt to achieve it. Taking the position of an author in the public sphere can be a degrading experience even for persons with the lowest social status.

Lane reaped meager rewards from his authorship. In the preface to Five Years in State’s Prison, Lane wrote:

I do not undertake this work, thinking to gain fame or applause; to the contrary, I know that the greater part will ridicule me, and say, “What a vile wretch!” … If I don’t get fame and applause, I am in hopes of getting a few shillings, or dimes, or cents.^

Lane reported that he sold eleven thousand copies of his pamphlet.^ That’s almost surely more than twenty times more copies than William Coffey, another early nineteenth-century prisoner-author, sold of his book Inside Out. But Lane noted that selling eleven thousand copies did not bring him much net profit: “it took me so long, and my expenses were so great on steamboats, railroads, and other ways, that I did not make much.”^

Over the long run, Lane’s work apparently benefited Lane and prisoners little. Perhaps because of poor prospects for alternative employment, Lane continued to write and sell publications. In 1839, he published a 225-page autobiography entitled The Wandering Boy, or Careless Sailor, and Result of Inconsideration. A True Narrative. In 1843 he published a patriotic song sheet, The Yankee Boy that went to sea from 99 to 43.^ Nonetheless, by the 1840s, destitute and ill, he was spending time in Sailor’s Snug Harbor, an “Asylum, or Marine Hospital, … for the purpose of maintaining and supporting aged, decrepit, and worn-out sailors.”^ ^

Any reform at Sing Sing that Lane helped to produce was at best short-lived. In 1842, Elam Lynds, a prison official known for brutal floggings, was rehired at Sing Sing.^ Lane petitioned Congress in 1855 for a military pension. He was refused.^ Lane is largely a forgotten name in the history of prison reform. Exposés of brutal treatment of prisoners have been a staple of prison literature through to the present. These stories haven’t been successful in producing enduring, systemic changes in the scope and nature of imprisonment.

Prison newspapers and periodicals provide a more accessible vehicle for prisoner-authors than do books. Writing a poem, report, or article usually requires much less investment in time and effort than writing a book. An editor of a book of prisoner’s poetry observed:

A major motivation of those writers {prisoners writing novels}, however, was profit. People in prison wrote novels to make money from them. Some actually did.^

This editor contrasted writing novels with writing poetry. Writing poetry, which many prisoners do, arguably has worse prospects for paying writers than does writing novels. However, almost all authors of both novels and poetry don’t even make enough money to support themselves. Prisoner-authors, like other authors, don’t have good prospects for reasonable pay for their work. Prison newspaper and periodicals enable prisoners to be authors while requiring less of the poorly paying work of writing.

Newspaper and periodical publication lessens an author’s costs of marketing work. Newspapers and periodicals usually have an established base of readers and ongoing, institutionalized processes for attracting new subscribers. A new book, especially one that a first-time author writes, faces a much greater challenge of attracting readers. A single-author book also offers worse opportunities for mitigating market risk through content with diverse forms, voices, and values.

Prison newspapers and magazines historically have supported more prisoner writing and prisoner-authors than has book publishing. From 1798 to 1988, self-identified prisoners and former prisoners wrote about 950 books.^ Assuming an average of 200 pages per book, the total pages was about 200,000. Over roughly half this period, the number of pages published in prison newspapers and magazines was about a million. Newspaper and magazines publish a much higher number of different authors per page on average than do books. The number of prisoner-authors who have been published in prison newspapers and magazines is thus much higher than the number of prisoner-authors who have authored books.

Books are relatively unpropitious media for bringing voices of prisoners and former prisoners into the public sphere. Prison newspapers and prison magazines historically have been more important than prisoners’ books for disseminating diverse prisoners’ perspectives on their prison experiences. Prison newspapers and magazines, however, have largely disappeared since the mid-1980s.

Prisoners in early-twentieth-century America wrote, edited, and printed prison newspapers that had circulation comparable to public newspapers of that time. The history of prison newspapers shows prisoners’ interest in participating in the public sphere. That history shows the feasibility of prisoners using the leading communication media of the time while respecting reasonable concerns for public safety and good prison management. The history of prison newspapers indicates that public officials once considered prisoners’ communications to have considerable public value.

Early ideas for prison newspapers drew upon growing appreciation for the importance of public newspapers. In 1870, a leading prison reformer presented a paper, “The Question of a Prison Newspaper,” at the U.S. National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline. This paper described “the supreme raison d’étre” for a prison publication as conveying public information:

knowledge of passing events, of the questions and strifes that enlist men’s tongues and pens, of the habits of thought and action inwrought into the life of the hour, of the opinions that prevail in society, of the principles and modes of business and labor ^

At the U.S. National Prison Congress in 1895, a presentation described ten points for a “Model Prison Paper.” Among those ten points were the importance of prisoners’ keeping abreast of public information and public developments:

A prisoner who reads the prison paper very long should find himself, when he goes out, very well posted upon public matters. … This can all be presented in a prison paper sufficiently to give every prisoner who reads it a considerable knowledge of the progress of the world.^

The idea that prisoners need to be publicly informed was a radical change from the earlier idea of cutting off all prisoners’ communication with the outside world.

The late-nineteenth-century reformatory movement spurred the development of the prison press. Reformatories served mainly young adults who were first-time offenders. Reformatories emphasized professional administration, education and treatment of inmates through individualized programs and incentives, and prison officials’ expert judgment for determining the necessary period of imprisonment. Zebulon Brockway, a leading prison reformer, served as warden of the first “new” reformatory, the New York State Reformatory at Elmira, from its founding in 1876 to 1900. In 1910, Brockway included in a list of means and motives for “The American Reformatory System”:

The weekly institutional newspaper, in lieu of all outside newspapers, edited and printed by the prisoners under due censorship.^

The underlying idea seems to have been to control and reform inmates intellectually. That idea gave rise to a much more vibrant and liberal prison press.

Prison newspapers and periodicals spread from mainly late-nineteenth-century state reformatories to being published in many state and federal penal institutions in the mid-1930s. The Elmira Reformatory established its prison newspaper, The Summary, in 1883. The Massachusetts State Reformatory at Warnerville /Concord Junction followed with Our Paper in 1885. By 1904, at least ten out of the seventeen state reformatories published newspapers or periodicals.^ An additional six state prisons also produced prisoner publications in 1904. By 1935, about 50% of state and federal penal institutions had published or were publishing prisoner newspapers or periodicals.^ ^ Studies of the prison press have failed to appreciate its long history.^

The Great Depression seems to have spurred the development of the prison press. About half of the prison publications active in 1935 had been started since 1930.^ During the Great Depression, prison industries undoubtedly contracted along with other industries, and perhaps even more so. Prison officials’ concern to keep prisoners occupied in the midst of idle prison industries may have spurred creation of prison newspapers and magazines in the early 1930s. A leading prison librarian provided a somewhat different interpretation in 1945. He observed that prison publications grew “with almost harelike frequency” from 1930 to 1934 “when the public had other worries than the coddling of prisoners.”^

A large number of prison publications existed from beginning of the twentieth century through the early 1980s. From 1904 to 1935, the number of active prison publications rose from at least 16 to 103.^ ^ In 1945, the number was down to 85.^ But by 1959, the number of prison newspapers and magazines was about 200, or perhaps 250.^ ^ In 1966, an extensive survey found 222 general-interest prisoner publications. It also found 113 special-interest prisoner publications serving in-prison clubs and groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Dale Carnegie, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce. About 54% of prisons had a general-interest prisoner publication. Prisons with prisoner publications held 66% of prisoners.^ A count of prison publications in 1974 observed:

If one includes the mimeographed newsletters which serve particular groups within a prison, the total probably goes well over a thousand.^

The Penal Press, an informal association of prison publications, numbered 190 members in 1980.^ A leading authority on the prison press estimated that about 100 prison newspapers and magazines existed in the 1980s.^

Early in the twentieth century, the Star of Hope, a publication of prisoners in New York State prisons, was comparable with typical non-prison newspapers. Prisoners wrote, edited, and printed the Star of Hope. It was the “largest and most widely circulated” prison newspaper of the time. The Star of Hope was a sixteen-page bi-weekly publication costing $2.50 per year. From about 1899 to 1903, about 1200 prisoners contributed about 5160 items to the newspaper. Contributors were from the New York State prisons at Auburn (including the women’s prison), Clinton, Sing Sing, and the Eastern Reformatory at Napanoch.^ ^ About 5000 copies of the Star of Hope were printed per issue. Perhaps 3000 of these copies went to New York prisoners, and the other 2000 to persons outside prisons.^ About this time, the average per-issue circulation of weekly publications produced outside prisons was 2400 copies per title. For daily publications produced outside of prisons, average circulation was 8000 copies. The average daily circulation of U.S. newspapers other than those in the ten largest U.S. cities was 4400 copies per newspaper. Newspapers outside prisons at the beginning of the twentieth century typically had four to twelve pages and cost $1 to $5 per year. Thus in size, cost, and circulation, the Star of Hope was similar to typical non-prison newspapers of its time.

By no later than 1909, other prison newspapers also had considerable circulation inside and outside prisons. Our Paper of the Massachusetts Reformatory was offered to all its prisoners, prisoners’ families, and public officials:

A copy of the paper is given to every prisoner, and after he has read it, he may send it home if he wishes to do so. We have a regular mailing list outside of the prison of some 300 names, including the judges of the courts of the state, and high officials of the state, other institutions similar to our own over the country, prominent penologists, prison congress people, and others interested in such papers. When the state legislature is in session a copy is sent to each member every week. We often print an edition of more than 2000 copies for all these purposes.^

The Mirror of the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater also had considerable circulation:

{The Mirror} is well known in the West and often quoted by other papers. The circulation is about 2200, for though only 1500 copies are printed weekly they are mailed after being read to almost as many more readers.^

The Summary, published at the Elmira Reformatory, mailed 150 copies per week to outsiders.^ Over all, the eighteen prison publications active in 1909 probably averaged about 1100 copies printed per issue.^ Since distributing prison newspapers within a prison, and then mailing out those same copies to others seems to have been common practice, total circulation was higher than the number of copies printed.

Prison newspapers and magazines continued to have considerable circulation inside and outside prisons through the early 1980s. Prison newspapers and magazines in 1966 produced a total of perhaps 270,000 copies per issue. About 33% of these copies were mailed to persons outside prisons.^ Two experts on the prison press stated in 1960 that the penal press is “serving an inside, as well as outside, readership of 2,000,000 throughout the United States and Canada.”^ ^ At that time, The Spectator, which prisoners at the Michigan State Prison published, was one of the largest prison newspapers:

{The Spectator} claims to reach “just about every nation in the world.” It has a press run of 9,000 copies at present, with 1,400 going outside the prison; 900 are taken home by the guards and other personnel; and a few hundred copies are sold weekly at the front counter of the prison.^

The Monthly Record, which prisoners at the Connecticut State Prison published, was distributed to a relatively large share of persons outside prison:

While serving a prison population of 1,000, the Record also reaches an outside audience of about 1,100, which includes legislators, judges, educators, psychologists, newspaper editors and clergymen. It is sent as far as India, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and is read by such notables as Red Cross President Gen. Alfred E. Gruenther, mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner and jazz musician Eddie Condon.^

The Menard Time, which prisoners at the Illinois State Penitentiary published, was one of the most highly regarded prison newspapers. In 1959, the year of its twenty-fifth anniversary of publication, the Illinois governor declared a “Menard Time Day” for the State of Illinois. The governor declared that the Menard Time had “attained a place of honest respect in the ranks of professional journalism.” The newspaper claimed to have at least 2000 readers inside prisons and 19,000 outside prisons.^ Estimates of circulation in printed copies (each of which could have been read by multiple readers) were considerably lower.^ Prison newspapers unquestionably were vibrant publications.

Prison newspapers didn’t keep up with the growth of newspapers outside prisons across the twentieth century. Copies printed per issue remained on average roughly constant: in 1909, 1935, and 1966, prison newspapers on average printed about 1100, 1600, and 1200 copies per issue, respectively. Newspapers outside prison, in contrast, increased circulation more than threefold: from 1909 to 1965, copies per issue for daily newspapers outside prisons rose from 9,300 to 34,500. Unlike the situation about 1900, the largest prison newspapers about 1960 did not have a circulation comparable to that of a typical daily newspaper outside prison. Compared to prison newspapers, newspapers outside prison had greater economic incentives to respond to the demands of readers and advertisers. They also had fewer constraints hindering such response. The business model and institutional circumstances of prison newspapers weren’t conducive to newspaper growth.

By the late 1990s in the U.S., the vibrant prison press earlier in the century had nearly vanished. The decline in the number of prison publications seems to date to the 1980s, but it is not well documented.^ In the year 2000, the number of prisoner written and published newspapers and magazines was about five. Only two prison publications remain with significant public recognition: The Angolite and Prison Legal News.

The Angolite is a bi-monthly prison news magazine. Published in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, The Angolite was founded in 1952. In 1976, a new warden willing to experiment gave The Angolite much more editorial freedom:

The Angolite would now be free to investigate, photograph, and publish whatever it wanted. The only restrictions, he {the warden} said, would be that it would not be permitted to criticize prison employees who were not in policy-making positions and that it would be required to exercise some restraint in using prison jargon.^

The Angolite carefully established its independence from the prison administration and prisoner factions within the prison. It began to put into practice journalistic ideals. As reporters, editor Wilbert Rideau and his assistant editor Billy Sinclair:

roamed freely about the prison working sources and researching stories. The sight of the two, Rideau with a camera and Sinclair with a notepad, became a familiar one in the prison’s many corridors. …The prison employees were not enthusiastic about the roving reporters. {The Warden} admitted that it disturbed some of his staff to have to answer questions put to them by inmates. “They never had to do this before,” he said.^

Rideau and Sinclair had special status as journalists:

The two did not observe normal prison routines and often ate their meals in their small sunlit office at the end of a corridor in the main prison complex. The two, in fact, had a number of unusual privileges. State officials, for instance, allowed the pair to venture out of the prison with a guard to cover a story. In addition the two could make regular use of a telephone.^

The Angolite achieved considerable public success. A leading scholar of prison journalism declared, “No other publication in the two centuries of prison publishing was as hard-hitting, unfettered, and successful….”^ In 1979, Rideau and Sinclair won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association. In 1980, Rideau and Sinclair won the George Polk Award for Special Interest Reporting.^ By the mid-1990s, The Angolite had attracted nearly 4000 subscribers.^

In addition to being the home of the Angolite, the Louisiana State Penitentiary is also the only prison in the U.S. that has its own prison radio station. The station is KLSP. The station director and most of the disc-jockeys are prisoners. The broadcast programs include a variety of gospel music, bluegrass, hip-hop, a Muslim-oriented talk-show, and some live celebrity interviews.^

Another surviving prison publication is Prison Legal News (PLN). PLN is a monthly prison news magazine published outside prison, without financial support or direct regulation from prison authorities. Since its first issue in 1990, the publication has been under the editorship of Paul Wright, who did time as a prisoner in the Washington State Reformatory. PLN is a hefty 48-page publication with detailed, original articles on law and policy relating to prisoners. Advertising, subscription fees, and grants support the cost of the non-profit publication. Both prisoners and non-prisoners author articles for it. PLN circulates about 6000 printed copies per month and estimates its monthly readership at 54,000 (9 readers per copy). About 65% of PLN’s readers are prisoners. The other 35% are persons outside prison:

civil and criminal trial and appellate attorneys, public defender agencies, journalists, academics, paralegals, university and law school libraries, prison law libraries, investment bankers, prison rights activists, students, family members of prisoners and concerned private individuals. State-level government officials also subscribe to PLN, including attorney generals, prison wardens, and members of other prisoner related agencies.^

In addition to its monthly print edition, PLN also distributes news through an email list and a well-developed website. PLN also publishes and sells books relating to prison law and policy. PLN’s business model is similar to that of outside trade publications. While successful outside trade publications typically soon confront intense competition from similar, newly founded publications, little such competition has developed for PLN.

Economic and political factors help to explain the disappearance of most prison newspapers and magazines since the mid-1980s. The U.S. prison population began growing rapidly about 1980 and subsequently became exceptionally large. Mass incarceration contributed to prison crowding and other strains on prison resources and management. In such circumstances, support for the prison press lost out to other prison priorities.

The economics of the prison press have never been favorable. Prisoners editing The Monthly Record at Wethersfield State Prison in Connecticut about 1960 earned 25 cents per day. In contrast, prisoners working in the boiler room earned 75 cents per day.^ Editors of the Angolite in Louisiana State Prison in the late 1970s estimated that they earned about 5 cents an hour.^ Prisoners, like other persons, will write for newspapers and do other work for little pay if they feel such work is important and valued. Income to cover prison press expenses for supplies, printing, and distribution has come from inmate welfare funds, general prison revenue, subscription fees, outside grants, and to a much less extent, advertising. Contributions and grants to the prison press matters materially and symbolically:

Under {U.S. President} Reagan, the NEA {National Endowment for the Arts} severely cut financial aid to fledgling magazines, and by 1984, every journal devoted to prison writing had gone under.^

Prison publications have tightly constrained prospects for subscriber and advertiser acquisition campaigns. Economic pressures easily cause prison publications to fail.

Political problems can also cause prison publications to fail. Prison publications’ editors and supporters have highlighted the role of these publications as members of the “fourth estate.”^ ^ ^ ^ Prison publications could provide the public with information useful for effectively governing prisons and guarding against abuses. Prison publications that are weak, complacent, or co-opted by administration interests might fail to perform these functions. Moreover, the concept of the fourth estate tends to presume that the public has an interest in continually addressing and correcting prison problems. For the public as a whole, that does not seem to be true.

In the early 1970s, prisoners began having some success in getting substantive judicial review of prison administrators’ decisions concerning the prison press. Prior to the mid-1960s, U.S. courts usually took a “hands-off” approach to prison administration.^ That approach subsequently changed. In 1971, prison officials at the Western State Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, for reasons that are not clear, padlocked the office of the prison publication Vibrations. The prison officials refused to allow prisoners to continue publishing Vibrations, and they placed prisoners associated with the publication in solitary confinement. The prisoners turned to the courts for redress of these actions. A U.S. appeals court found that the transfer to solitary confinement, without notice of charges, a hearing, or unusual circumstances, did not meet minimal due process requirements.^ In 1974, a U.S. District Court ordered the Vermont Department of Corrections and the Warden of the Vermont State Prison:

To cease suppression of the January, 1973, issue of The Luparar {a prison newspaper}, to return the copies of that issue that they seized to the editor and staff of the Luparar, to permit that issue to be mailed to subscribers outside the prison, to promulgate regulations dealing with the publication of the newspaper if there is continued interest in publishing it, and to provide a review procedure in those regulations in accordance with that described earlier in this opinion.^

In the early 1980s, California courts ordered prison officials to reinstate an editor of the San Quentin News and to allow that newspaper to resume publication.^ California courts also ordered prison officials to allow the Soledad Star News to publish a cartoon, a photograph, and two articles.^ At the same time, prisoners lost other cases in which they asked judges to overturn prison administrators’ decisions regarding prison publications.^ Nonetheless, by the mid-1980s, prison administrators could no longer be confident that they could control prison publications without concern for judicial review.

Increased judicial engagement with prison publications probably prompted prison officials to avoid creating or sustaining such publications. A perceptive judge observed:

A warden seldom will find himself subject to public criticism or dismissal because he needlessly repressed free speech; indeed, neither the public nor the warden will have any way of knowing when repression was unnecessary. But a warden’s job can be jeopardized and public criticism is sure to come should disorder occur. Consequently, prison officials inevitably err on the side of too little freedom.^

In considering a prison publication case in California, another judge similarly explained:

It is recognized that the department {California Department of Corrections} is under no compulsion to permit the publication of newspapers within our prisons. It has, however, made a stab in that direction but, for its pains, has been subject to a rolling barrage of First Amendment artillery. If the department can live with the guidelines promulgated in this opinion – as I have suggested at the outset, it can – no harm will be done. On the other hand, if it finds the guidelines intolerable, it will simply have to discontinue a worthwhile educational and vocational training program.^

By 1985, five out of seven California state prison newspapers had vanished. One of the remaining two was printed only sporadically.^ Prison newspapers in the three federal prisons had also disappeared. An attorney with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons explained:

“Rather than continue litigating and letting the courts decide what we could print, we took action, “ said John Shaw, an attorney with the Bureau of Prisons. “With no newspapers, censorship isn’t addressed.”^

Hundreds of prison newspapers existed under the “hands off” judicial position prior to the 1960s. The absence of such publications now seems to be of little judicial or public concern.

Legal victories for First Amendment rights, like literary awards, are highly prized. To the extent that such victories hurt the persons made the objects of battle, champions might respond by pointing to the need for further, bigger victories. The Warren Courts’ enlargement of crime defendants’ constitutional rights probably contributed to the rise of mass incarceration.^ Legal victories that the prison press secured in the 1970s and early 1980s similarly contributed to its subsequent demise.

In addition to economic and political challenges, prison publications face less appreciated formal challenges. Writing in 1910, a penal authority highlighted issues of style and tone in describing the contents of prison publications:

Long familiarity with many of these institution papers has revealed the pleasant fact that one may look in vain for “cant” in them. … The religious side has due prominence in most, but it is a sane religion, that appeals to reason and inspires to better living. …

There is almost nothing of the “goody-goody” style of writing in the articles contributed by the men themselves. If they have any advice to give, they chose language that meets their fellow convicts halfway. …

It is quite as important in prison literature to avoid unwise use of even good material as in speaking to the boys in chapel. A brilliant superintendent once said that, “Washington’s little hatchet and the prodigal eating husks are the bugbears of reform schools”….

There are articles on juvenile courts, on probation, on the indeterminate sentence, all with the right tone. …

But jokes! There is hardly one which does not show its American sense of humor by the jokes in every cranny and corner. Most are copied from other papers. They are not always very funny, nor always in good taste, though never vulgar. Here more than elsewhere a certain amount of slang finds vent.^

In the late twentieth-century, prison publications highly respected in scholarly discourse are styled as uncompromising, hard-hitting, rabble-rousing, fiercely independent, real, and anti-capitalist.^ ^ Prison publications’ lack of political consciousness of the overwhelming predominance of men in prison has never garnered scholarly mention. A prison editor observed, “Editing a penal publication is a delicate undertaking … if it is to serve any purpose beyond that of a provincial diary.”^ Seeking public significance implies communicating in a public style sharply distinguished from that of a provincial diary.

Prison publications seeking to be publicly significance face the challenge of sides. Prison publications often attempt to inform the public about prisons and prisoners. At the same time, prison-press editors are keenly aware that their readers often seek to determine what side a prison publication is on:

Reduced to essentials, it seems to be an either-or proposition – either the prison newspaper attacks the administration or it is against the inmates.^

A study of the Canadian prison press in the 1960s observed:

the format, style and substance of the prisoners’ publications became an important point of contention within prison populations. The population’s demand that their magazines more stridently air prisoner’s grievances was made in a period when censorship was heavy and administrative demands were largely in contradiction with those of the prisoners. This is played out in the pages of this press with the endless discussion and editorial commentary on the question of tone and content – bitterness and “crying” charges being countered with exhortations to be positive or to write more substantial critical analysis.^

A leading prison newspaper editor in the U.S. in the 1940s noted:

Being a prison editor meant walking a tightrope between officials and convicts, unable to tell the whole truth about either. I couldn’t give officials deserved credit without getting my back chewed on for being a handshaker, nor scream too loud about bad prison conditions without being listed as an agitator.^

Censorship through the force of prison officials affects what appears in prison publications. So too do reader demands to be on a side. Like non-prison newspapers, prison newspapers have universally covered sports.^ Sports reporting personally distances attention to sides.

Readers’ demands also arise from formal expectations and conventions. Readers expect texts of particular types to perform in particular ways. A prison newspaper editor explained:

Like an oil portrait, a prison cell or a poem, a penal publication is shaped as much by what is left out as by what manages to get in. To begin with you’ve probably read a thousand wet-eyed stories about inmates already. We mean every time you pick up any outside magazine or newspaper there’s some creepy article about them written by a social worker with a smug attitude, or a tower guard with a chip on his shoulder, or an ex-inmate who had a nagging mother and a lousy alcoholic father and a sister who was a you-know-what. … The truth about prison life won’t take you into a slick palatable fantasyland of Noble Savages or elegant gonifs with hearts as big as Alaska. Forget about that Disneyland stuff – those ideas are strung together like sausage links; just when you think they should end, along comes another piece of baloney.^

Another prison newspaper editor observed:

Many {persons outside prisons}, if they think of prisons at all, think of them either as places where men are subjected to all sorts of physical and spiritual torment and brutality – which is seldom true these days – or as reformation factories where erring offenders are magically transformed into tame and respectable and productive members of society –which has never been true. They think of prisoners as either Burt Lancaster in stripes, if they are romantically inclined or have read much cheap fiction, or as totally evil and degenerate and feebleminded types who are better off in prison anyway.^

Effective characters in public discourse are stereotypes – social worker, alcoholic father, Noble Savage, Burt Lancaster, you-know-what. Archetypes are deeply rooted in the human psyche. Widely circulated public works use and create archetypes and stereotypes.

Consider Jack Henry Abbott. In 1965, while in prison for forgery, Abbott stabbed to death a fellow inmate. He later escaped from prison, committed a bank robbery, and was recaptured. In 1977, Abbott read that Norman Mailer, a prominent author, was writing a book about a person who had been convicted and executed for murder. Abbott began to correspond with Mailer. With the help of Mailer, Abbott’s letters to Mailer were published in 1981 as a book entitled In the Belly of the Beast. Abbott, like Mailer, became a celebrity. Vigorous public support helped to win Abbott’s early release from prison. The editor of an anthology of prison writings described more of the story:

David Rothenberg {a prominent New York theater publicist who founded for ex-prisoners the Fortune Society and served as its executive director for 18 years} recently described Abbott on his second day of liberty, sweating through an appearance on Good Morning, America, in which Mailer answered Abbott’s questions for him. Rothenberg invited Abbott to drop by the Fortune Society for help with the deinstitutionalization process. Abbott was not interested. Within a month, he had killed a man in a fight. The romance between writers and convicts had run its course, and prisoners were out of fashion in the eighties.^

Fashions, like prisoners, have many more dimensions than being in or out. Nonetheless, public works tends to generate a battle between two champions, a story of good versus evil, and representations of characters much less complex than real persons.

The prison press has sought to communicate that prisoners are people. A prison newspaper editor about 1963 forthrightly declared:

We hope to communicate to the public that we are men and women, not ogres, as they so often believe.^

A scholar of the penal press observed:

In trying to show that “we are people, too,” these editors rely on news about the worthy activities and projects of inmates, but they also make a direct “pitch” in columns and editorials. Scores of articles, though the words are different, are on this same theme. Typical of these is the following from the Marquette {Michigan} Weekly Progress:

“Contrary to the opinion of many, convicts ARE people. They are just people. …

Convicts ARE TOO people.” ^

Public texts are not formally oriented to communicating personal existence. Personal existence is experienced in personal encounters that public works don’t provide.

Suffering is a formal problem for public works. Violence and pain attract attention. A poet explained the problem:

Human tragedy is naturally compelling and the telling of human pain has always had an insidious attraction for human beings; yet after a while, a tale poorly told will grow tiresome and the listener numb to its details, to the pain. Such tales tend to fade away, to be put aside. The ones that last are those that transcend the pain.^

An artist who hopes for something more than just enduring fame confronts a conflict in writing for the public:

Yet, for the artist, a strange conflict remains, for if the artist has suffered, … he or she does not want the art to be read simply as art, as something that transcends the details of its history, the details of the moment, the details of the cause.^

In a review of poetry by a prisoner who experienced ineffable horrors, a reviewer wrote:

The literature of suffering – though it seems tacky to think of it as a genre – often invites us to wonder whether appalling experiences are somehow “worth” the poetry they can inspire. Abani gives us a terse answer: no.^

The review concluded by urging readers, as a matter of duty, to read Abani’s book:

The least we can do, belittled as we can’t help but feel, is listen to it.^

Emphasizing the public’s duty to read public works won’t sustain them. Emphasizing the public’s duty to read public works won’t make public works into a communicative form other than what they are.

The collapse of the prison press since the mid-1980s anticipated more recent difficulties in the press outside of prisons. Newspapers traditionally have sought to obscure the personality of reporters and highlight information of general public importance. Information of general public interest is now widely available through a multitude of online sources. At least in the U.S., post-World War II newspapers embraced a style of professional detachment and neutral viewpoint. They also claimed special public importance and journalistic privileges. Digital networks that allow anyone to make works available to everyone makes that style and those claims less interesting and less credible.

Public works are a poor form for some important communication. A prisoner who won a PEN literary award declared:

When I won the award, it gave me an overwhelming sense of acceptance. I now felt that I had something to offer humanity.^

The award that this prisoner won is given to only one author per year. Seeking such an award is an exceedingly inauspicious path for persons to gain a sense of acceptance. Public works are something that persons offer other than themselves. Humans owe nothing to humanity other than themselves. Public works obscure that reality. Only in personal communication is an offer of nothing more than oneself satisfying.