Real journalists wrote and edited this (not AI)—independent, community-driven journalism survives because you back it. Donate to sustain Prism’s mission and the humans behind it. For incarcerated people in the rural South, maintaining connections with loved ones and others on the outside has always required perseverance. From Beattyville, Kentucky’s Lee Adjustment Center, where he’s been incarcerated for six years, Lavar Melton described the pr…