Incarceration means more than physical isolation; it disconnects prisoners from society, culture, and community. In U.S. prisons, access to media is shaped both by institutional structures and informal social processes. Although state and federal regulations set regulations, wardens have broad discretionary power and often use media access as a tool for reward or punishment. Media use and access in prisons becomes a form of currency that affects status, relationships, and perceived legitimacy within prison life. Through in-depth interviews with 26 individuals formerly incarcerated in Georgia, we examine how access to media resources defines and distributes power in closed and surveilled environments. With Bourdieu's field theory as a conceptual framework, we investigate how media becomes economic, political, cultural, social, and symbolic capital. We foreground the voices of those with lived experience and find that media is a mechanism for preserving identity, navigating social hierarchies, and maintaining ties to life beyond prison.
Barnett et al. (Sat,) studied this question.
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