Successful applicants will spend several months helping conservation efforts on Skomer Island.

I don’t normally write about higher profile prisoners, opting instead to interview those prisoners who no one has heard of and have never accessed journalists before, for whatever reason. I don’t feel I’m contributing much unless I’m finding people I feel are really successfully hidden. Recently, however, and especially in the last week, on the heels of the major HBO documentary about the horrendous conditions in Alabama’s prisons and the struggle for freedom and human rights inside of them, and with a statewide prisoner work stoppage looming in February, the Alabama Department of Corrections is working hard to keep the most prominent, often the most accessible and well known voices inside the prisons inaccessible and suppressed.