Webinar: Exercising our right to know: Making effective public records requests

by Sarah Staudt, September 28, 2026

Every state and the federal government has transparency laws on the books that allow the public to access a huge range of government documents. The information contained in these documents can be invaluable in advocacy efforts to change the criminal legal system. Information about who’s in jail and prison, how they’re being treated, and how incarceration functions is usually just an email away.

Often, though, criminal legal system advocates feel intimidated by the records request process and don’t use this valuable tool. It doesn’t help that government agencies often stymie records requests however they can, using technical language and loopholes to avoid providing information.

Join the Prison Policy Initiative on October 27, 2026, from 1:30-3:00 EST for a discussion demystifying records requests. We’ll share highlights from our records request toolkit, including the basics of making a request, and tips and tricks we’ve learned over decades of sending requests to jails, prisons, and other agencies that can make your requests more effective.

We’ll also be joined by Mike Wessler, who formerly served in communications roles for a number of government agencies and has been on the receiving side of records requests. Mike is now the Prison Policy Initiative’s Communications Director, and will give his perspective on why agencies seem to work so hard to avoid giving out information, and how to get past common roadblocks to get the information you need.

Register for the webinar

WEBINAR: Fighting for families: How advocates are resisting attacks on visitation and physical mail

by Sarah Staudt, June 4, 2026

Protecting family connections and bonds with loved ones during incarceration is one of the most important and, increasingly, one of the most difficult things advocates can do. Contact visitation, handwritten cards and letters, and regular phone calls improve mental health outcomes for both people in prisons and the families who love and support them. They also strengthen parent-child relationships and familial bonds, improve in-prison conduct and make prisons safer, and can significantly increase a person’s chance of success upon release.

Nevertheless, jails and prisons across the country are implementing increasingly restrictive communication policies. Contact visitation is under attack, and more than 30 states no longer allow incarcerated people to receive physical mail from their loved ones. These moves, ostensibly in the name of security, not only devastate incarcerated people and their loved ones but make us all less safe in the long run. But families are fighting back, championing policies to protect these vital lifelines and the benefits that come with them.

On July 1, Prison Policy Initiative hosted a webinar Jodi Hocking, Executive Director of Return Strong Nevada, and Taj Mahon-Haft PhD, Director of The Humanization Project in Virginia. We took a closer look at the importance of family connections, learned more about the ways they are under attack, and shared strategies to help families fight back.

Spanish language interpretation is available by selecting the “Spanish” audio track in the “Settings” menu on the webinar’s YouTube video. The American Sign Language interpreter feed for this video is available here.

Webinar Resources

The slides for the webinar are available here.

Prison Policy Initiative Resources

• Mail Scanning Toolkit — This toolkit gives ideas for how best to fight against mail scanning in prisons.
• Research Roundup: The positive impacts of family contact for incarcerated people and their families — This briefing summarizes decades of research showing that visitation, phone calls, and mail are essential to the wellbeing of incarcerated people and their families, and shows how communication with loved ones reduces recidivism and misconduct.

Additional Resources

• The Humanization Project — Webinar guest Taj Mahon-Haft is the director and co-founder of this Virginia-based organization, which seeks to inspire more humane, compassionate treatment of all people behind bars by humanizing their lives via their voices, mutual education and research.
• Return Strong — Webinar guest Jodi Hocking is the executive director of this Nevada-based organization, which works to protect the humanity of those affected by incarceration right now while simultaneously setting the foundation for a future free from prisons.
• We can’t afford it: Mass incarceration and the family tax — This June 2025 report by fwd.us that estimates the costs that mass incarceration brings to families — including communication costs.
• The power of free communication in prisons and jails — This May 2026 report by Worth Rises details the immense impact of free jail and prison phone calls.