Founded in 1965 and run annually until 1990, the American Penal Press Contest honored excellence in prison journalism. Sometimes referred to as the “Pulitzer Prize behind bars,” the contest attracted hundreds of submissions from prison newsrooms all around the country, hitting a high point in the 1970s, a time when nearly half of all prisons had a news publication.

“[T]he contest validated the efforts of mostly self-taught writers,” former editor Wilbert Rideau explained in The Nation in 2014. Rideau, the U.S.’s most decorated prison journalist, edited Louisiana State Penitentiary’s magazine, The Angolite, for more than 20 years starting in the mid-1970s.

“[The contest also] brought new awareness of prison issues to the outside world at a time when the public still viewed prisoners as redeemable and prisons as places not only for punishment but also for rehabilitation,” Rideau wrote.

Despite the prominence of the prison press, a wave of tough-on-crime policies and a growing intolerance for prison journalism led many publications to shutter in the 1980s. The contest went with them. 

Thirty years later, the prison media landscape is once again flourishing. So Pollen Initiative, in partnership with the contest founding institution, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, thought it only right to bring the contest back too.  We celebrated the contest’s rebirth in 2025.

In its first year back, the American Penal Press Contest garnered over 170 submissions from 21 prison publications across nine states. The second annual contest will announced the 2026 winners in September.