prison on Vice

Pen Pals

HardWhite and Harry Potter

Harry Potter was fresh from the world and had a sickness to feed. The weakling fiend probably hated everything right now, but mostly he hated that his drug was gone. All Harry Potter will want is to get high and the boys are about to swarm on him. Little white wizards get no play in county lockup. Full story

Alexis Neiers’s Pretty Wild Road to Recovery

The Former Celebrity Thief and Drug Addict Who Inspired Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Bling Ring’

Alexis Neiers's life has been turned into a meme, a magazine article, a book, a symbol for millenial narcissism, and now a movie directed by Sophia Coppola and starring Emma Watson. But she's trying to escape all that. Full story

Hearing from Three Guantanamo Bay Prisoners Who've Been on Hunger Strike for 100 Days

Yesterday was the 100th day of the inmates' protest against their treatment and, out of the 166 still being held at Guantanmo, 102 are on hunger strike, with 30 being force-fed. Authorities shackle hunger-strikers to chairs and insert tubes into their noses and stomachs to force-… Full story

Should Murderers Be Allowed State-Funded Sex Changes?

After dragging on for years, the request of Michelle Kosilek, a.k.a. Robert Kosilek, to have the state pay her medical costs for sex-reassignment surgery has finally reached the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Full story

Pen Pals

The Trials of Job

After my sweet release from prison last year, I struggled for about a year looking for a decent job. I badly wanted to work, but I quickly became discouraged when my first ten applications were shot down, probably thanks to my status as a felon. Those were some tough times. Full story

Pen Pals

Bert Meets a Real Rapper Who’s a Year Out of Prison

A lotta dudes in prison are rappers, but I don’t pay them much mind. But in the case of SunBlaze, I had a feeling that he was serious bizness—the way he kept to himself, quietly writing and not talking a lotta shit like lotsa dudes do. He got out last May and has been doing very… Full story

Pen Pals

Addiction Isn't a Disease, I'm Just a Dick

When you’ve been sent back to prison multiple times for dirty pee like I have, you end up thinking a bunch about addiction—whether you’re a screwup or a bona fide addict, and if you’re an addict, what that means. Lots of people define addiction as a “disease,” but I don't… Full story

Pen Pals

Dying of a Dirty Mouth

Don’t think appearance matters? I once saw an old man get killed in prison for having bad breath. He was Puerto Rican, but we called him Miagi 'cause he had a very Asian look and resembled Pat Morita. Unfortunately, his mouth was completely decayed and smelled like sweltering gar… Full story

Olympia’s Grand Jury Resistors Speak

In a rather harrowing act of modern civil disobedience, Matt Duran and Katherine "Kteeo" Oleknik refused to rat on their friends' political beliefs after being scooped up by the FBI after May Day protests last year in Seattle. They spent five months in prison but were released wh… Full story

Jailbert

We had a feeling our prison correspondent would do well on video. Drugs remain a problem for Bert, and he consistently fails urine tests and is sent back to jail over and over again. In this two-part series, we examine Bert in his most vulnerable state as he tries to stay on the Full story