Prison Legal News is a black-and-white monthly American magazine and on-line periodical published since May 1990. It is a non-profit 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and it reports on prison legal cases and prison conditions primarily in the United States. Specifically, Prison Legal News' coverage includes court access, disciplinary hearings, prison conditions, excessive force, mail censorship, jail litigation, visiting, telephones, religious freedom, free speech, prison rape, abuse of women prisoners, retaliation, the Prison Legal Reform Act (PLRA), medical treatment, AIDS, the death penalty and control units.

Prison Legal News' was originally inspired by Vladimir Lenin's State and Revolution which advocates organizing activists around a newspaper. Prison Legal News has both been admired and disliked for its strong advocacy of prisoner rights and was referred to by one law enforcement publication as a "litigation juggernaut."

As of March 2010 PLN has a circulation of approximately 7,000 hardcopy issues per month. PLN also has subscribers in European and Asian countries. About 65% of PLN's subscribers are state and federal prisoners, and PLN has prisoner subscribers in all fifty states. Based on PLN's November 2009 reader survey each subscriber's magazine is read by an average of almost 10 people, so the monthly readership of PLN is around 70,000. As of August 2010, subscriptions are $24/yr for prisoners, $30/yr for non-incarcerated individuals, and $80/yr for lawyers, government agencies and corporations.

In 2010, Prison Legal News sued Galveston County Jail and its current and former Sheriffs for preventing the jail's inmates from receiving the publication.