Tag Archives: Prisoners

For prisons to function smoothly and profitably, the major tools of control – violence, surveillance, separation – must be complimented by a host of less obvious instruments and technologies. These include censorship in the mail room, the cultivation of racial tension, integration of prisoner labor into facility maintenance, cafeteria operations, and private contracting, among many others. This week on Kite …

This week features a variety of conversations that we are sharing with you through a partnership with StoryCorps. The event, Dismantling Barriers to Life, was about the impacts of mass incarceration. Dismantling Barriers to Life was hosted last month in Chicago, and these are some of the stories collected for the event. We hear people talk about how incarceration affected …

This week, we focus on the closing of a volunteer-run dorm in the Monroe County Jail. The Addicts in Recovery, or AIR Dorm, has been a unique part of the local jail programming for several years. The AIR program provides a place for selected inmates to participate in intensive addiction recovery programs (addiction treatment, anger management, community building, meditation, parenting, …

Our focus for this episode is writing to prisoners. After some prison-related news, we speak with Lukah Revolt, who explains how she went from writing a few political prisoners to writing more than 30 people on the inside. Lukah explains the basics of sending a letter inside, and why it is important to communicate with people who are locked up.

This episode is a conversation with Steve Garrett, who during his time in Ohio’s prison system, used the legal loopholes and statutes he learned to challenge the State on its own terms. He shares stories with us about how he used the law to his advantage.

In this episode, we speak to people with experience with both homelessness and incarceration. Often, there is a cyclical relationship between these two situations. We speak with Forest Gilmore, the director of the Shalom Center here in Bloomington. Forest talks about various barriers that both people who experience homelessness and those who have been incarcerated face. We have conversations with …

In the second episode of our series on the mass escape from the Woomera refugee detention center in Australia, Aren Aizura parses out the stakes of the protest camp, its participants, and the escalation to the breakout.  From there, Aren moves to the escape itself, the emotional meeting between refugees and outside supporters, and the complicated choices they each faced …

In 2002, imprisoned refugees inside Australia’s Woomera immigration prison coordinated with 2500 outside supporters who had pitched camp outside the facility.  Their coordination allowed them to stage a mass breakout.  This is the first of three episodes dedicated to telling this story, from an interview with a participant in the solidarity camp. It’s a vital reminder than in an age …

This episode, we focus on two individuals who are working to organize support systems for communities that are directly affected or targeted by law enforcement and incarceration. First, we continue our conversation with Akili Shakur, wife of prisoner Shaka Shakur, who works to organize support groups for family members of prisoners. Then, we hear from local student organizer Willy Palomo, …

Our focus for this episode returns to the impact of incarceration on families. First we have a discussion between our friend Lucy and one of her fellow classmates at Indiana University, Rafael Green, III. Rafael describes having multiple family members in prison during his childhood, and the way that affected both his childhood, and the lives of other family members …