Webinar: Exercising our right to know: Making effective public records requests

by Sarah Staudt, September 28, 2026

Every state and the federal government has transparency laws on the books that allow the public to access a huge range of government documents. The information contained in these documents can be invaluable in advocacy efforts to change the criminal legal system. Information about who’s in jail and prison, how they’re being treated, and how incarceration functions is usually just an email away.

Often, though, criminal legal system advocates feel intimidated by the records request process and don’t use this valuable tool. It doesn’t help that government agencies often stymie records requests however they can, using technical language and loopholes to avoid providing information.

On October 27, 2026, Prison Policy Initiative hosted a webinar demystifying records requests, sharing highlights from our records request toolkit, including the basics of making a request, and tips and tricks we’ve learned over decades of sending requests to jails, prisons, and other agencies that can make your requests more effective.

The webinar also included a panel with Mike Wessler, who formerly served in communications roles for a number of government agencies and has been on the receiving side of records requests. Mike is now the Prison Policy Initiative’s Communications Director, and gave his perspective on why agencies seem to work so hard to avoid giving out information, and how to get past common roadblocks to get the information you need.

Spanish language interpretation is available by selecting the “Spanish” audio track in the “Settings” menu on the webinar’s YouTube video. The American Sign Language interpreter feed for this video is available here.

Webinar resources

• Power Point slides for the webinar. These include a written summary of some of the key points of the discussion with Mike Wessler.
• Public records request toolkit — This toolkit provides tips, tricks and a wealth of state-specific information about making records requests.
• Records request examples — Four examples of records requests that illustrate how to approach a request when you have varying degrees of information about the documents you’re looking for.