Tony Vick

    Tony has served almost three decades of a life sentence in Tennessee. He is the author of two books, Secrets From a Prison Cell (Cascade Books, 2018) and Locked In and Locked Out (Resource Publications, 2023). His writing has also been published at Solitary Watch, the Progressive, Truthout, Shado and in multiple books and anthologies, the most recent of which is Storms of the Inland Sea (Shanti Arts, 2022). His Filter story about CoreCivic medical care won “Best News” at the 2025 Stillwater Prison Journalism Awards. You can reach him by USPS.

    Tony Vick #276187
    South Central Correctional Facility
    PO Box 279
    Clifton, TN 38425-0279

    To See the US Prisons Crisis, Look at the Books We’re Trying to Read

    The library at South Central Correctional Facility, a Tennessee prison privately operated by CoreCivic, ...

    “A Moral Crime”: 22 Years in Solitary, and the Prison System That Watched

    At age 18, Frank De Palma entered Nevada Department of Corrections custody on a ...

    How Prison Guard Became the Job Everyone Leaves

    Lonnie, in his late 40s, was a high school teacher for 20 years before ...

    Watching the Trump Trials in Prison, With Con Artists Cheering Him On

    Our living unit at South Central Correctional Facility in Tennessee doesn’t have a communal ...

    How We Still Find Joy After Decades in Prison

    After nearly 30 years in prison, I still find moments of joy and happiness. ...

    CoreCivic Manages Our Prison, and Tries Not to Manage Our Medical Care

    Five years ago, abdominal pain drove James to the infirmary at South Central Correctional ...

    TN Private Prisons Quietly Transfer Us, This Time Without Saying Why

    In 2016, the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) opened Trousdale Turner Correctional Center—the largest ...

    The Private Prisons Industry Is Changing What Constitutes “Food”

    Prisoners in solitary confinement are often served something called Nutraloaf. Imagine taking all the ...

    The Recipes I Use to De-Escalate Violence in Prison

    In 2015 I was transferred to West Tennessee State Penitentiary, a prison with a ...