Writing from behind bars: Europe listens to prisoners

Monday, Feb 9, 2026

Prison journalism initiatives across Europe empower inmates to write, challenging silence and demanding recognition as human beings.

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[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

In various European countries, inmates are taking on the role of writers to challenge the silence surrounding prison life and give voice to their human experience. Italy has a well-established network with about twenty inmate-run periodicals, evolving from small internal bulletins to published works. In Spain, an initiative like Voz del Patio in Burgos features content created by inmates alongside professional journalists, distributing its issues locally and nationally. Hungary maintains the “Hungarian Prison Newspaper,” one of the oldest such publications, which serves educational and reintegration purposes for inmates. France features activist journalism through L’ Envolée, produced externally from inmate testimonies and reports. In Greece, the newspaper “Prospavtontas” is produced by students in a correctional school, allowing them to cover free topics without direct prison censorship. Despite differences in frequency and organization, these initiatives share the common goal of using journalism as a tool for dialogue, transparency, and affirming human dignity, asserting that inmates are individuals with critical thought and the right to public expression.


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PULSE is an initiative for cross-border collaborative journalism in Europe co-funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement n. PO 4500158093.

PULSE is an initiative coordinated by OBCT that has been promoting intensive journalistic cross-border collaborations in Europe since 2024. Its main aim is to help strengthen the European public sphere by reporting on and telling stories from new and diverse perspectives.

At the heart of PULSE are 10 leading national news outlets (Delfi – Lithuania, Deník Referendum – Czechia, Der Standard – Austria, EfSyn – Greece, El Confidencial – Spain, Gazeta Wyborcza – Poland, HotNews – Romania, HVG – Hungary, Il Sole 24 Ore – Italy, Mediapool – Bulgaria) and three transnational organisations, including OBCT , n-ost and Voxeurop .

Additional outlets and journalists are involved as associate partners, including EUobserver , Føljeton (Denmark), H-Alter (Croatia), Levila (Estonia), Rubryka (Ukraine), and The Journal Investigates (Ireland).

PULSE is driven by a sort of virtual transnational newsroom made up of journalists from all the publications involved. It collaboratively produces new journalistic content on European issues on a daily basis, coming in many different languages. The editorial output amounts to over a thousand publications per year, mostly in article form.

PULSE also runs 4 thematic networks open to any European journalist interested in crucial issues such as EU enlargement, relations between the EU and other global powers, the EU’s green transition, or media and the information society. These networks function as online communities and periodically publish calls for pitches.