Private Prisons

186 | The Penal System is Bleeding Out

In this week’s episode, we start off with a call for action from Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. JLS is calling for a new set of actions from August 21- September 9, 2020. After we hear from them, we share the story of Nick, a long-time Bloomingtonian who passed through both private prisons and those run by…

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163 | The Business of Incarceration: A Conversation with Craig Gilmore

This week, we speak on the phone with writer and prison abolitionist Craig Gilmore, who begins by discussing his recent piece in Commune Magazine. The article, “The Business of Incarceration” is a review of American Prison, a critically acclaimed 2018 book by Shane Bauer. In his conversation with us, Gilmore critiques the book’s thesis on private…

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62 | Prison and the Press

This week is the first episode of several about the intersection between the media and prison struggles. In January of 2015, journalist Barrett Brown was sentenced to 63 months in prison for his role reporting on Anonymous’ hack of Stratfor, a private security and espionage company. Today, we are sharing a talk he gave at…

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22 | Spaces of Exception: Resilience in Prisons and on Reservations

This week, we explore various spaces of exception. We spoke with Matt Peterson, a documentary filmmaker and contributor to a multimedia project called the Native and the Refugee. Along with Malek Rasamny, he has worked in both native reservations and Palestinian refugee camps, drawing links between each as spaces of exception, excluded from the national…

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16 | Families and Prison, Part Two

This week’s episode is the second installment of our Families and Prison series. We speak with April, a formerly-incarcerated mother who works with House of Hope in Martinsville, Indiana. She shares her experiences and thoughts about the issues facing women in prison, as well as the work she has been doing since her release. We…

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