Biography
Former US Army soldier imprisoned in Washington State (#930783) who became a prominent jailhouse journalist and was listed in PFOC's Breakthrough magazine as a North American political prisoner. Co-founded Prison Legal News from inside prison in 1990, building it into the country's leading publication on prisoners' rights and the prison-industrial complex. Documented in PFOC Breakthrough magazine.
Custody chronology: supported year, unresolved exact start
In his firsthand UCLA oral history, Wright dates his Washington imprisonment to 1987–2003 and explicitly says his first incarceration began in 1987. The 2007 individual interview profile identifies entry into the Washington State Reformatory in 1987 and a sentence of twenty-five years and four months. His first-person CJR interview describes arrest approximately a week before his planned Army departure, but supplies no calendar day. These sources do not corroborate the legacy October 17 arrest day. Arrest and incarceration therefore have year precision; the offense day is not used as an arrest date and no exact served-day count is retained. The separately documented December 16, 2003 release and existing identified portrait are unchanged. The underlying murder prosecution and his subsequent prisoner-rights journalism are distinct; the chronology does not describe the murder prosecution as a prosecution for activism.
