Journalist Toolkit
Journalists are one of the primary audiences of our reports and briefings, because they can play such a critical role in uncovering the abuses and unfairness of the criminal legal system. We do our best to help journalists at every stage of the reporting process.
We’ve put together several topical guides for journalists, compiled below. Further down, we've also collected links to the tools on our website that journalists might find especially useful.
Be sure to also check out our Reporter's guide to reporting guides around incarceration, highlighting the best resources from other organizations in this space.
Topical guides for journalists
- What can journalists do when prisons and jails cite HIPAA to withhold information about deaths in custody?
If you’re investigating a death (or deaths) behind bars, you may be stonewalled by a corrections agency claiming that HIPAA — a law regulating healthcare information — prevents them from releasing important data about the death. In this guide, we offer context about when these denials may be justified, when they definitely aren’t, and how journalists can take proactive steps to avoid having their public records requests denied. - How journalists can push back on prison and jail “gag rules”
One of the most common obstacles to reporting on prisons is the “gag rule” preventing employees of many state and local corrections departments from speaking to the media. These rules are pervasive, far-reaching, and — we explain in this briefing — largely unconstitutional and unenforceable. We provide context journalists can use to push back. - How to get started reporting on issues with parole release in your state
Frustratingly little data exists around parole release systems in the U.S. — a gap that hinders journalists attempting to navigate the system, assess its effectiveness, and champion meaningful reforms. This short guide highlights how our Parole in Perspective report can help journalists get basic information about parole, and how to use it to launch investigations into your state’s system. - Prison discipline policies: How journalists can investigate them — and why they may be important for your story
If you’re reporting on topics like solitary confinement, early releases, and prison programming, your state prison system’s discipline policy — which lays out which behaviors are punished, and how — may be an important part of the story. In this blog accompanying our report Bad Behavior, we suggest questions to ask, and records to request, to find out how discipline is used in your state prison system. - Here’s how to uncover how the money in “inmate welfare funds” is being spent
Almost all prison systems, and many jails, maintain accounts funded by incarcerated people and their loved ones’ purchases of phone calls and commissary items. In our report Shadow Budgets: How mass incarceration steals from the poor to give to the prison, we found that these obscure funds are often used in ways that have nothing to do with the welfare of incarcerated people, and that may even violate state law. In this briefing, we break down how journalists can investigate these funds in their states. - How journalists can investigate the bail bond industry: Story ideas and tips
Our 2022 report All Profit, No Risk exposed how, across the country, bail companies take money from poor defendants while failing to deliver on their promise to courts: making sure their clients come to court and paying bail when it is owed. This guide breaks down how journalists can investigate whether the bail industry is exploiting the legal system in their counties and states.
Other resources you might find helpful
- Reporter's guide to reporting guides around incarceration — A curated list of resources about getting criminal legal system data, cultivating incarcerated sources, engaging people behind bars as reporting partners, and more.
- Data Toolbox — a compilation of the datasets we use in our reports.
- Research Library — a curated collection of over 4,000 reports and academic papers about the criminal legal system.
- Data sources guide — originally written for advocates, this guide to sources of data on police, jails and prisons may be helpful for reporters.
- Correctional Contracts Library — a searchable database of contracts (and related documents) between prisons and vendors. Journalists can also upload contracts they have acquired to the database to make them accessible to others.
- Correctional Facility Locator — searchable list of correctional facilities in the U.S., including population and Census block data.
- Trump Tracker — a curation and summary of the second Trump administration's most impactful changes to the criminal legal system.
- Public Records Request Toolkit — designed for advocates, this state-specific guide to requesting records from the criminal legal system may be useful for journalists as well.
Recommended Reading:
Advocacy Toolkit
Resources, tips, and best practices to help advocates working to end mass incarceration.
50 state incarceration profiles
All of our recent reports about prison/jail growth, racial disparities, and more, re-organized by state.
Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie
The U.S. incarcerates nearly 2 million people. Where are they locked up and why? Read our report.
Events
- October 27, 2026:
On October 27, 2026 at 1:30 p.m. EST, join the Prison Policy Initiative for a webinar focused on making public records requests. We’ll cover the basics of making a request and provide tips and tricks we’ve learned over decades of sending requests to jails, prisons, and other agencies that can make your requests more effective.
Register here
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