Contribute

Prisonpedia is built from documents. Court records, Bureau of Prisons data, sentencing transcripts, agency press releases, and the firsthand knowledge of people who have been through the federal system. Much of that knowledge is not written down anywhere else. This page explains how to add to it.

Anyone can contribute. You do not need an account to send a correction or a tip. You do not need to be a lawyer. If you served time at a facility we have a page on, you know things the public record does not capture, and that is worth submitting. If you spotted a wrong release date or a misspelled case number, tell us. Small fixes matter as much as long accounts.

What we will not do is publish rumor, settle scores, or run anything that reads like a press release. Read the rest of this page and you will know what fits and what does not.

Ways to Contribute

There are a few different kinds of contributions, and they get handled differently.

Corrections. A date is wrong. A sentence length is off. A name is misspelled. A facility is listed at the wrong security level. These are the fastest to process. Point us to the exact spot and, where you can, the source that proves the right answer.

New information on an existing page. Maybe a person on one of our pages was resentenced, transferred, or released, and the page has not caught up. Maybe a facility changed its visiting rules. Send what changed and how you know.

Firsthand accounts. If you were incarcerated at a facility we cover, or you went through a process we describe, your direct experience is useful. We use these in the "Notes from Alumni" sections of facility pages and to sanity-check the procedural pages. Tell us what you saw, what the daily routine looked like, how intake actually worked, what the commissary stocked. We will treat your account as a primary source and weigh it accordingly.

Suggested new pages. A facility with no page. A legal topic we have not covered. A case that belongs in the record. Tell us the subject and point us at the documents that exist on it.

Source tips. Sometimes the most helpful thing is a link. A newly unsealed indictment, a docket entry on PACER, a BOP policy statement nobody has written up. Send the link and a line about why it matters.

What We Look For

A good submission is specific and checkable.

Names spelled the way they appear in court records. Dates in full. Case numbers when you have them. The facility's real designation, not a nickname. If you are describing a process, say which step you mean and roughly when you went through it, because rules change year to year and the year matters.

We are an encyclopedia, not a forum. That shapes what we can use. We do not publish opinions about whether someone deserved their sentence. We do not publish guesses about guilt, motive, or what someone was "really" like. We do not run anonymous accusations against a named person. State what happened. Leave the verdict to the reader.

Firsthand accounts get a little more room than that, because lived experience is the point of them. You can describe how a place felt, what the staff were like, what the food was. What we still ask is that you stick to what you witnessed and not present secondhand stories as your own.

Neutral does not mean bloodless. The clearest entries read like a careful reporter wrote them: plain, exact, no adjectives doing work the facts should do. If a draft leans on words like "shocking" or "mastermind," we cut them. We would rather under-write than oversell.

Sourcing and Accuracy

Every factual claim on a person page needs a source behind it. We rank sources in tiers.

At the top are primary documents: Department of Justice press releases, court filings pulled from PACER or RECAP, the BOP inmate locator, the U.S. Code, the Federal Register. These are the spine of the site. Below them are the major news organizations, the wire services and national papers of record. Below those, reputable regional outlets and national magazines. We do not cite Wikipedia, personal blogs, anonymous posts, or non-DOJ press releases as fact. They can point us toward a source, but they are not the source.

When a claim could damage someone's reputation, we hold it to a higher bar: two or more independent sources before it goes in. We state legal outcomes exactly. "Charged with" is not "convicted of." "Pleaded guilty to" is not "was found guilty of." If charges were dropped or someone was acquitted, that fact leads.

Firsthand accounts are their own category. We cannot independently verify what you personally lived through, and we do not pretend to. We label these as alumni notes so a reader knows the nature of the source. That honesty is what makes them usable.

If you send a correction, the best thing you can include is the document that settles it. A docket link beats a memory. A BOP record beats a news summary. We will still take the tip without a source and go find one, but you will speed things up if you bring the receipt.

How to Submit

Use the talk page attached to the article you want to change. Every page has one. Open it, describe the fix or addition, and link your source if you have one. This is the best route for corrections and new information, because it keeps the discussion next to the page it concerns.

For a firsthand account, a suggested new page, or anything that does not map onto an existing article, email the team at [email protected] or use the contact form linked in the site footer. Tell us the subject, what you know, and how you know it. If you want your account credited a certain way, or kept anonymous, say so in the message and we will honor it.

If you plan to edit regularly, you can create an account. An account is not required to send a correction or a tip, but it lets you track your edits and build a record on the wiki.

We read everything that comes in. We cannot promise to use everything. Some tips do not check out. Some accounts cannot be sourced to the standard a public page needs. When we can use what you send, we will, and the page will be more accurate because of it. That is the whole point of the project. The record is only as good as the people willing to correct it.