Tag Archives: Prisoners

This week, we speak with Dan from Michigan Abolition and Prisoner Solidarity. MAPS is an exemplary grassroots abolitionist group, which arose out of the 2016 National Prison Strike and, specifically, the Kinross uprising in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Dan lays out this history, and gives us an inventory of COVID-19 in Michigan prisons, based on a zine of prisoner …

This week, we share a conversation with Brian Dolinar. He has been on the show before, speaking about Parole Illinois. In this episode, he talks about Guardian RFID, a company that produces handheld devices that allow jail guards to do headcounts for inmates electronically via scanning. As he explains, various technologies are being used to expand the carceral net. He …

This week, we continue to air selections from a presentation moderated by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and featuring James Kilgore speaking on his new book Understanding E-Carceration.  Speaking from his own experience, he emphasizes that electronic monitoring is another euphemism for the expansion of the carceral net across the globe, enriching corporations and shackling prisoners — often at their own expense …

This week, we share two features dealing with the cunning ways that the carceral system conceals itself and the harm it causes.  The first is an account from Adrien Espinoza, who has been on the show before, speaking about conditions in the Maricopa County Jail. As a child, Adrien survived the Adobe Mountain School in Arizona.  As he demonstrates, this …

This week, we air an interview with WFYI reporters Lauren Bavis and Jake Harper in Indianapolis. They co-host the podcast called Sick, the second season of which focuses on health care issues in the Indiana Women’s Prison. As they share on the show, the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic ignited their interest in IWP and and led them to research …

The explosive spread of the Omicron variant has brought our focus back to the COVID-vulnerability the prison system imposes on its captives. This week, we speak to two people — one outside and one inside the walls — dealing with the effects of COVID on California prisoners.. We start off with an interview with Olivia Campbell, an advocate for prisoners …

This week, we honor the late Russell Maroon Shoatz. On December 17th, Russell Maroon Shoatz passed away. In 1970, Shoatz was convicted for the murder of a police officer in Pennsylvania and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. On February 20, 2014, Shoatz was returned to the prison’s general population after being held in solitary confinement …

This week, Mwalimu Shakur calls us from inside Corcoran prison in California to share his experiences in the Secure Housing Unit. He’s been on the show before, talking about the gladiator fights used by guards to punish and control the imprisoned population. Housed in Corcoran for decades, he describes how he kept going under such extreme isolation.  We will have …

We are sad to report that Russell Maroon Shoatz, who was recently granted compassionate release after his decades in prison, has passed away. This week, we return to the final part of our conversation about carceral non-profits with Zhandarka Kurti and Jarrod Shanahan. Kurti is a professor of criminology and Criminal Justice at Loyola University Chicago, and Jarrod Shanahan is …

This week, we cover carceral non-profits in an interview with Drs. Zhandarka Kurti, a professor of criminology and Criminal Justice at Loyola University Chicago, and Jarrod Shanahan, professor of criminal justice at Governors State University in Chicago. Bella Bravo interviews Zhana and Jarrod, who are abolitionist scholars researching incarceration, and in recent years, their work has turned to the reconfiguration …