| Chapter 13
Covering Prisons and Jails
By Jenifer Warren
Rules to Live By
Few reporters are born with a passion to cover prisons. Paris? Sure. The White House? You bet. But inmates and the system that imprisons them? Not so much.
That was certainly the case for me. Until the mid-1990s, my wide-ranging journalistic travels had never taken me inside a jail or prison. Like many people, my familiarity with the reality of incarceration was mostly informed by The Birdman of Alcatraz, Papillon and one of my favorite Paul Newman flicks, Cool Hand Luke.
So it was pure happenstance that I wound up spending almost a decade on the prison beat. It started, oddly enough, with a press release.
The pitch came from a California literacy group that bestows a “tutor of the year” award to the person most successful at teaching others to read. Typically, the recipient was a gray-haired do-gooder working with kids. In this instance, California’s “tutor of year” was a prisoner.
And not just any prisoner. David Ramos was a convicted murderer, serving a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. Hmm, sounds like a quickie feature with a quirky twist, I thought at the time.
As I explored the story of Ramos and his tutoring a bit further, a much more nuanced and compelling tale emerged. In the end, the Los Angeles convict became my starting point for examining the politics surrounding the governor’s record on the parole of convicted murderers. Ultimately, Ramos was released (by a subsequent governor) and I won an award for the coverage.
The lesson: Don’t forget that one inmate’s individual experience (sometimes revealed in a simple press release!) can open the door to a much bigger, more important story.
Here are some other things journalists should consider to maximize their experience on the prison beat:
1) The importance of reputation.
Without a reputation for accuracy and fairness, reporters on any beat are on shaky ground. In the correctional world, where mistrust of the media already runs sky high, strong personal credentials are especially important.
Be professional, punctual, respectful, and careful. Be accessible and, when criticized, be responsive rather than defensive. Refrain from sharing personal details about yourself or your family with inmates, prison officers and others in the system. These are not your friends, or your enemies. They are sources, subjects and, sometimes, targets in your stories.
Most importantly, be very, very wary of everything you are told. Many prisoners will try to convince you of their innocence; some may in fact have been wrongfully convicted, but check and double check everything, and be aware that you can squander a lot of time running down disappointing cul de sacs.
2) Stay in the gray.
Avoid seeing and writing about issues in black and white. Yes, there are a lot of bad guys and gals behind bars—but they are not all psychopathic killers who cannot be trusted. Yes, there are sadistic correctional officers. But the majority are hardworking people who are doing their job well and trying to support their families.
Don’t let your coverage, and your language, degenerate into cartoonish stereotypes. Find ways to break old patterns and illuminate what’s different.
3) Strive for story diversity.
Don’t get sucked into covering the predictable when there are so many facets to the corrections story.
Shadow a prison chaplain. Profile a pregnant inmate giving birth behind bars. Sit in when a victim meets her attacker at a restorative justice encounter. Find out how many days in a given month your local prison was on lockdown, and ask why. Spend a day at a juvenile prison, and chronicle the despair and hope within. Document how much correctional officers are making in overtime. Compare correctional spending to spending on higher education or other public programs.
4) Read the mail.
If you’re doing your job right, you will have scores of prisoners looking to be your pen pal. Yes, it’s hard to keep up with the mail. But take the time to tear open those letters and at least read the first few sentences. You will know pretty quickly whether the writer may become a useful source.
5) Details, details, details.
You are the eyewitness to a subculture most people will never see. Don’t miss the chance to make your storytelling as powerful as it can be.
Employ all your senses when you’re behind bars so you can translate the experience vividly for your readers. Smells, sounds, the way the air feels inside a cellblock—gather it all so you can transport readers into the place.
The expressions on the faces of guards and inmates. The dripping water pipes overhead. The stifling, or freezing temperatures. The size of the cell—use comparative language. The menu. The tattoos. The collection of items on the wall, shelves and floor of a cell.
Prison is a very colorful, almost alien world—don’t undersell it.
6) Take care of yourself.
Most importantly, admit to yourself that prison and jail are depressing places. They are brimming with troubled people ensnared in miserable lives. Despair and frustration and anguished proclamations of innocence are rampant.
It is easy for all of it to leave you feeling drained and despondent.
Be watchful, and don’t be afraid to yell uncle when you’ve had enough.
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