Jesse Vasquez served time in 12 of California’s state prisons before he got to San Quentin. There, he became editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News, one of the most prestigious and well established prison newspapers in the country. But in this world of prison news, he noticed a major disparity: San Quentin gets more news coverage, and has more resources, than most other California prisons.
“Every time we publish San Quentin News I’m proud of the fact that we’re putting out a paper that has a history and is award winning,” Vasquez said. “ And I’m also ashamed to say that we’re not accurately representing the 33 other prisons.”
California imprisons around 95,000 people in 34 facilities, many of which are in rural areas. Compared to San Quentin, which is in California's Bay Area, these prisons often have considerably fewer resources and less programming.
Now the executive director of the Pollen Initiative, Vasquez is working to correct this problem by developing a network of prison journalism programs, beginning with the Central California Women’s Facility in the rural Central Valley.
The reporting project uses this new program as a case study to examine issues surrounding the current American prison press. Topics include resource disparities between urban and rural prisons, First Amendment rights in prisons, the history of the prison press, how new technologies and policies are shaping prison papers, the relationship between the prison press and local publications, and the tension between serving inside and outside audiences.
