Close-up Vintage Wooden Hourglass on Wooden Background, Sand running through the bulbs for measuring the passing time

The Meaning of Time in The Hour Glass

Writings from a women's prison in the 1930s grapple with philosophical questions on time and life. “The mere lapse of years is not life.”

The Lives Beyond the Life Sentences

Their lives didn't stop when the judge sentenced them to life in prison. Then what? A 1994 issue of The Angolite profiled the longest-serving Americans.
Legal Corner

Search Warrants and Case Law, a Prison Primer

The laws around search and seizure as they apply to average people, explained by Rafael Torres, an incarcerated Inmate Counsel Substitute in Louisiana.
Maia Szalavits

On Drugs and Harm Reduction with Maia Szalavitz

Author of Undoing Drugs and NYT columnist Szalavitz talks history, science, media shifts, politics, and how the US might mitigate its overdose crisis.
From Sunfighter, Volume 3, Issue 2, 07-01-1975

Juneteenth: A Freedom Celebration Behind Bars

Juneteenth is commemorated by an incarcerated Black woman in a 1975 issue of Sunfighter. What does it mean to celebrate freedom when you have none?
The Last Class

The Last Class, 28 Years Later

What happened to the last of the Pell Grant-funded prison higher ed graduates and their paralegal skills? Open Campus's Charlotte West and Angolite associate editor John Corley report.
An illustration from Anarchist Black Dragon, Volume 1, Issue 5

The Harms of Being Subjugated and Doing the Subjugation

A formerly incarcerated psychologist looks at incarceration through the lens of learned helplessness, the Stanford Prison Experiment, synapses, and power.
Covers of The Angolite

The Angolite Comes to the Reveal Digital American Prison Newspapers Collection

The award-winning prison newspaper has long covered topics like prison policy, the death penalty, the societal cost of mass incarceration, that are still relevant today.
From the cover of The Angolite, Volume 25 & 26

Reconciling with Violence through Poetry

A poem in The Angolite reconciles with the lethal violence of prison through creative expression.
Illustration of a guard looking in on a distraught prisoner

The Other Crime Victims

Can perpetrators of crime also be victims of crime?