Last month’s inmate labor strike highlighted the trouble of getting real time news from behind bars and any news at all about our prisoners work conditions.

With the summer heat approaching, we look at the process inmates go through for relief before resorting to rioting - the ways you can question operations near you.

With few opportunities to voice their experiences, inmates offer their own insights into prison culture through their complaints. But between record-keeping and paperwork control, access makes them a hard resource to look at until its too late.