[1] The newspaper launched in 1990 and is published by Inside Time Limited, a not-for-profit organisation and a wholly owned subsidiary of the New Bridge Foundation, a national charity for prisoners founded in 1956.

[2] Editors and contributors involved with the newspaper include Noel "Razor" Smith, Erwin James, Terry Waite, Jonathan Aitken, and Rachel Billington.

The quarterly, eight page, newspaper was launched in the House of Commons and broadcast on BBC Breakfast from Grendon Prison.

Both Lord Woolf and the late Judge Sir Stephen Tumin concluded that prisoners had inadequate opportunities to air their grievances.

Today, Inside Time is published monthly, with 56 pages and receives some 10,000 items of communication each year from prisoners, detainees and patients in special hospitals and their families.