An incredibly important and timely question, addressed in Aperture Issue 230: Prison Nation.
From Aperture:
Most prisons and jails across the United States do not allow prisoners to have access to cameras. At a moment when 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the US, 3.8 million people are on probation, and 870,000 former prisoners are on parole, how can images tell the story of mass incarceration when the imprisoned don’t have control over their own representation? Organized with the scholar Nicole R. Fleetwood, an expert on art’s relation to incarceration, “Prison Nation,” the Spring issue of Aperture magazine, addresses the unique role photography plays in creating a visual record of a national crisis.