Media Matters

The Union for Democratic Communications conference is being co-hosted by Project Censored and is sited at the University of San Francisco. Getting the Word Out from the Inside: Media Access and Prisons 3:15 to 4:45, Fromm HallCorrectional facilities, from maximum security facilities like San Quentin and Pelican Bay to immigration centers, the juvenile justice system, private for-profit prisons and county jails, where prisoners spend longer and longer periods of time under prison realignment, are one of the least visible parts of our society. With the largest incarceration rates of any industrialized country, the US depends on the limitation of communications into and out of prisons to maintain public acquiescence in having one out of every 20 men in the US under correctional supervision. The dehumanization of prisoners is accomplished in a variety of ways: by telephone calling rates characterized by ridiculously high commissions, by bureaucratic restrictions on press access to prisons,