The Permanent Record

In this special conversation with Cincinnati Black United Front's Iris Roley, she shares her pioneering experience in seeking police accountability by centering Black community members in reform. She shares the story of filing a first-of-its-kind racial profiling class action settlement that led to a Collaborative Agreement between police and the community that has seen use of force and arrests halve in the two decades since it was first implemented. She talks about how to ensure different impacted groups feel included and find common ground, overcome resistance to oversight reforms, and use data to make a compelling case and evaluate progress.

Professor Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at UT-Austin joins us to delve into options for oversight as we see a rise in jail deaths, the risks of treating children as adults in the criminal legal system, and alternatives and best practices for jails. She discusses the importance of empathy for people in the criminal justice system and emphasizes we can have safety and a more humane system.The Prison and Jail Innovation Lab

Insha Rahman, vice president for advocacy and partnership at the Vera Institute of Justice and expert on bail and pretrial detention, joined us to help correct misunderstandings about bail, and she points out that reforming pretrial detention can make our communities both safe and just. She parses out the politics from the policies both nationally and in Shelby County, Tennessee, where significant changes to the pretrial detention process were implemented in mid-February 2023.

They Knew Which Way to Run is a stunning look at the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy in India. The 7-part podcast series takes us on an amazing exploration of themes often discussed on The Permanent Record. Themes like accountability, pain, harm, and how we deal with those as human beings.

A few short weeks after the killing of Tyre Nichols, UCLA Law Professor Joanna Schwartz released a very timely book. It's called Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable. In it, she describes how current law makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to hold police accountable when they violate the rights of those they are sworn to protect. She has a deep understanding of the law and the rules of civil litigation. She vividly demonstrates how the legal system all-too-often protects police officers despite appalling behavior and clear civil rights violations.

On this episode Josh speaks with newly elected Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon. We learned about his career from public defense to finally taking over duties at the Juvenile Court. Judge Sugarmon comes from a family with a very distinguished history of standing up for civil rights, and he carries on that tradition.

We're back with a special interview of the newly elected District Attorney in Shelby County, Steve Mulroy. Steve was elected on August 4th and took office on September 1st. His first week in office was marred by some of the worst incidents of crime that Memphis has seen in a long time. We discussed that first week and what it was like for him personally. Steve and his staff of more than 200 people are responsible for prosecuting every crime in Tennessee's second largest county. We talked about the priorities Steve campaigned on and how he is going about implementing them in his first few months in office. We also discussed some of his hidden talents, things you might not know about him.Recorded live in front of an audience of Just City supporters at Crosstown Concourse on September 29th, 2022.

Liliana Segura is an award-winning investigative journalist covering the United States criminal justice system. She currently writes for The Intercept. Liliana covered the recent federal execution spree set in motion last summer by the Trump administration. We invited Liliana to share from her unique perspective, having traveled to Terre Haute, Indiana for all 13 executions. We also talked a little bit about Tennessee's renewed pursuit of executions and the future of the death penalty in America.

"The number of women in American prisons has risen at an alarming rate over the past three decades. In this episode, we talked with Pat Culp, the Executive Director of WEBS Memphis - Women Empowered to Become Self-Sufficient. A native Memphian, Pat has spent the last 28 years providing women in our community with valuable opportunities to return home with marketable skills and the confidence to succeed. We invited her in to discuss what inspired her, what motivates her to keep going, and how prison is different for women."

Kelley Henry has spent her career fighting for people facing the death penalty in Tennessee. Currently, she is fighting for Pervis Payne who, despite consistently maintaining his innocence, is set to be executed in December. The day before we recorded this interview, a Shelby County judge ordered DNA testing in his case - a significant victory for Kelley and her team. We sat down with Kelley on Constitution Day to discuss Pervis Payne's case and some of the many frustrations of death penalty work in Tennessee.As a complement to this episode, we highly recommend you read this profile of Kelley written by our friend and guest on Episode 40, Steven Hale. You can learn more about Pervis Payne at www.pervispayne.org.

In October of 2018 The Marshall Project featured the work of Mark Loughney, an artist who is currently incarcerated. We began conversing with him through email and snail mail and started collaborating on an exhibit, which is still in the works. We decided it was time to talk with Mark voice to voice and let our audience hear what life is like inside and how his experience with art has affected him. Learn more about Mark and his work on his instagram page @loughneyart

In this very special episode, we talked to “America's Next Top Lawyer”, Furonda Brasfield former America's Next Top model contestant, turned attorney and Executive Director of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Just City Court Watch coordinator and State organizer, Joia Erin facilitates a conversation with Furonda about the COVID-19 outbreak at Cummins State Correctional facility in Arkansas and discusses the recent deaths of young black men and women killed unjustly in America. Amidst an international coronavirus pandemic, the widespread killing of black bodies in America still persists. Listen in as Joia and Furonda discuss how police brutality is just one factor of systemic oppression.

The United States leads the world in incarceration of children, and Liz Ryan and the Youth First Initiative are leading the effort to change that. Youth justice is a frequent topic of conversation in Memphis, and Shelby County is considering a major expansion of its youth detention facility. For this episode of The Permanent Record, we talked to Liz about challenging the misconceptions of children in the justice system, political will, and the possibilities that exist when we rethink youth detention.  

State Representative Andrew Farmer lives in Sevierville, Tennessee and represents the 17th House District. He serves as Chair of the Criminal Justice Subcommittee, and we suspected he had a family connection to Dolly Parton. We invited him on the podcast to find out about both.

In this very special episode, we talked to Raymond Santana - one-fifth of the group now known as The Exonerated Five. Raymond and four other young men from NYC were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989. They are now the subject of Ava DuVernay's Netflix series, When They See Us.Seventeen years after being fully exonerated, they are finding their voices again. Raymond was in town for a few hours recently and agreed to give us a few minutes of his time. We think you'll love what he had to say.

Steven Hale is a staff writer for the Nashville Scene. He has been a media witness to three of Tennessee's most recent executions. His written accounts of those experiences are very moving and provide critical insight to the politics and mechanics of capital punishment in Tennessee. Since the State has set more execution dates, including one in October, we asked Steven to join us to give his firsthand account and discuss some of the many issues surrounding our accelerated use of the death penalty.

Noura Jackson was charged and convicted of killing her mother in a 2009 trial that made national headlines; however, citing significant missteps by the prosecutor in the case, her conviction was unanimously overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court. The lead prosecutor on the case was Shelby County's current elected District Attorney. Maintaining her innocence, Noura entered an Alford plea to manslaughter and was released from prison 3 years ago. We sat down with Noura to talk about life before and after prison, what's she's up to now, and her hopes for the future.

Emily Bazelon's latest book Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration explores the critical role of the elected prosecutor in our criminal legal system. It prominently features the case of Noura Jackson, which resulted in an overturned conviction because of misconduct by the current Shelby County District Attorney General. Emily came to Memphis recently to promote her book, and she joined us in-studio for her second interview on The Permanent Record. We talked more about the power of elected prosecutors and even chatted about politics and the 2020 election.

Earlier this year, the Marshall Project and local journalist, Wendi Thomas, filed a lawsuit against the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission over its failure to disclose financial information and other records. Simone Weichselbaum, who covers national policing policy for the Marshall Project, was investigating the claims often made by Memphis officials that an increase in the number of police officers has a direct impact on violent crime. Simone ran into a dead end when the Crime Commission refused to provide requested information, so they filed the lawsuit.We talked to Simone about the importance of transparency when making public safety policy; some of the unusual things she discovered about the Memphis Police Department; and the challenges of diversity and inclusion in journalism. We hope you enjoy our conversation.

Carrie Johnson ist the Justice Correspondent for National Public Radio's Washington Desk. She covers a wide range of emerging justice issues, law enforcement stories, and legal affairs. Carrie is one of our only repeat guests on The Permanent Record. Check out her first interview (Episode 16) in our four-part series on the media. For this episode, we spoke to Carrie about the practical implications of the recently passed First Step Act and the politics that made its passage possible.

The new year brought new Federal criminal justice and prison reform, so we're devoting the next few episodes of the Permanent Record to examining the First Step Act. It has been widely praised and was broadly supported by a bi-partisan coalition that has become very rare for Congress. President Trump recently signed the bill, and when it goes into effect it will reduce our federal prison population. But what else will this bill do -- and what are the next steps we need to take for more meaningful reform to occur? In this episode, we discussed these questions and more with Mark Holden, General Counsel to Koch Industries, one of the bill's most outspoken supporters.

Rudy Valdez is a filmmaker committed to making cinematic, meaningful documentary films that inspire social change. We invited him on The Permanent Record to discuss his latest film, The Sentence, a documentary about mandatory minimums and sentencing reform that he shot and directed over the course of a decade. It's available now on HBO.

Every time we sentence a person to jail or prison, we also sentence a family to a life without that person. The demands on the families of incarcerated people are often overlooked, but Veda Ajamu's family is all too familiar with the many burdens of having a loved one locked up. For this episode, Veda gave us a vivid look at how her family has struggled to stay connected to her brother, Robert, during his decades in the Federal prison system.Veda lives in Memphis and works for the National Civil Rights Museum; she is also very active with FAMM, an organization devoted to preserving the dignity of those on the inside and supporting their families as they try to stay connected. Check out FAMM's video featuring Veda and then give our latest episode a listen.

In mid-October, Tennessee announced that Edmund Zagorski would be executed on November 1, 2018, and the State intends to use the electric chair to do it. If carried out, it will mark the second execution in Tennessee this year, after nearly a decade without one. Native Tennessean Shane Claiborne recently wrote a book about the death penalty in America. The book is called Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why it's Killing Us. In light of Tennessee's grim return to capital punishment, we invited Shane on The Permanent Record to talk about what's wrong with the death penalty, how we got here, and where we're headed as a state and a country.Check out Shane's book www.executinggrace.com

Dr. Margaret Vandiver is a retired professor of criminal justice at the University of Memphis and a strong supporter of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. She has studied state and collective violence, ranging from the use of the death penalty in America to contemporary instances of genocide. She is the author of Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South and also volunteers with the Lynching Sites Project here in Memphis. John Ashworth is the executive director for the Memphis Lynching Sites Project, and also joined us for this episode. John spent several decades in the military and the airline industry before taking the lead in this important work. We discussed some of the critical issues facing our criminal justice system today and why it's important to have a space to discuss the past.

The Daily Memphian is a brand new local media outlet, and its first issue included an expansive investigative piece -- “A Reluctance to Record”. It's a must-read that reveals yet another instance where part of the criminal justice system in Memphis is an extreme outlier -- the Memphis Police Department does not record homicide interrogations. We thought this critical issue deserved even more attention so we asked the author, Marc Perrusquia, to come on The Permanent Record to discuss it. Perrusquia is Distinguished Journalist in Residence at the University of Memphis, heading up the newly established Institute of Public Service Reporting. He is also reporting for the Daily Memphian and worked for more than 29 years at The Commercial Appeal, where he won numerous state and national awards for his work. Hear what he has to say about his months-long investigative reporting on this story.We've also posted the full audio of two recordings referenced during the interview. Cordell Walton “Packaged Confession”https://www.dropbox.com/s/3q8uc5p0m786e79/Cordell%20Walton%20confession-1.m4a?dl=0Cordell Walton Preliminary Hearing 09.17.2018 Detective Eric Kelly Testimonyhttps://www.dropbox.com/s/37oyilwdaiorawg/Sept%2017%20prelim%20hearing.m4a?dl=0

The Shelby County general election is less than a week away, and your host is a hopeless political junkie. So, for this special episode, Josh convened a special election roundtable with two of Memphis' top political reporters. Ryan Poe of the Commercial Appeal and Bill Dries of the Memphis Daily News have been covering elections up and down the ballot for this and many elections past. Hear what they have to say about the County Mayor's race, the new County Commission, and the impact that the Juvenile Court oversight has had on this election. Plus, a lot more!

With election season in Shelby County in full swing, we present one of two recent interviews with the candidates for County Mayor. David Lenoir has played SEC football, started a mutual fund, and served two terms as Shelby County Trustee. He is now the Republican candidate in the race for Mayor.When recently discussing the challenges facing our community, Lenoir pointed to his faith and said this, "So, for me, it is top of mind and a real desire and passion of mine that we, as a community, come together as one. I've seen the power and benefit of it in my own personal life." Listen to our conversation with him about sentencing, pretrial detention, and what it means to be "the County's banker."

With election season in Shelby County in full swing, we present one of two recent interviews with the candidates for County Mayor. Lee Harris has been a City Councilman, a State Senator, and is now the Democratic candidate in the race for Mayor. A native Memphian, when asked about moving home to Memphis instead of a taking a job on Wall Street after law school, Sen. Harris said, “I've always been a big challenge kind of guy. Going to Wall Street is not a challenge.” He sat down with us and discussed some of those challenges - crime and punishment, public safety, and his readiness for the job he's seeking. 

Our guest for this episode is Luther Ivory. He shared some of his experience growing up in Memphis during the Civil Rights era, including a very significant evening at Mason Temple on April 3, 1968. Today, Luther Ivory is mostly retired from his job as an associate professor of religious studies and director of African American studies at Rhodes College. He has also planted and pastored multiple churches, toured the world aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer and raised a family in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. His warmth and enthusiasm were contagious, and you'll love his stories and his passion for life. All are very apparent from this recent interview.For more of Lu's story, check out this 2013 opinion piece in The Christian Science Monitor.Check out our newest sponsor Sudio Sweden! Fashionable/high quality bluetooth headphones. Use promo code PERMANENT at checkout for 15% off!

Our latest episode features founder and executive director of Playback Memphis, Virginia Murphy, and Memphis Police Officer Chris Street. Officer Street is former military and makes for the quintessential cop in appearance and pedigree. But the way he describes his job and his experiences as a police officer will surprise you. Virginia brings grace, thoughtfulness and delight to otherwise daunting situations. Those gifts have given her organization its staying power for nearly a decade. Here's to 10 more years of Playback Memphis!

Homeboy Industries bills itself as the largest gang intervention program on the planet. There is little doubt that this unassuming collection of neighbors has transformed thousands of lives and saved thousands more. The Homies, as they are known, give tours, bake bread, learn trades, and generally invest in each other and their neighborhoods. Two Homies, Omar and Jason, were in town recently with Homeboy founder Father Greg Boyle, and we sat down with them for a few minutes to get the inside scoop. It was a delightful conversation that we hope you enjoy.Learn more about Homeboy at homeboyindustries.org. Listen to a brilliant conversation with Father Greg here.

During the recent commemoration of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the community in which he was sacrificed offered symposia, galas, and more than a few bus wraps as reminders of his work and legacy. In our opinion, a few voices rose above the cacophony. Dr. Charles McKinney was one of those voices; he is an Associate Prof of History and Director of Africana Studies at Rhodes College. Prof. McKinney was kind enough to spend a precious few minutes with us during that very busy month. Among a few other things, he reminded us that Dr. King spoke equally about love, power and justice, but all too often we ignore the power and the justice and focus on the love. Unfortunately, this dishonest treatment of Dr. King's message informed how we marked his tragic death. In this interview, Professor McKinney vividly reminds us that, 50 years later, things are not alright.

Adam Foss founded Prosecutor Impact in 2016 with the mission to improve community safety in the United States through a better understanding of the most important actor in the criminal justice system: the criminal prosecutor. They pursue education, training, and improved access to technology for the American prosecutor, which they believe will improve public safety results in our communities.Adam has long been a critical voice in the national conversation about criminal justice reform. His 2016 TED Talk, A Prosecutor's Vision for a Better Criminal Justice System, has been viewed nearly 2 million times and is a clarion call for the involvement of prosecutors in the work of reversing mass incarceration. Watch it and listen to our interview to find out what Adam and PI are doing to make that a reality.

Abe Fortas was born in Memphis in 1910 and would go on to become a Supreme Court Justice of the United States. His journey to the nation's highest court took him far away from his hometown, but the impact of growing up poor in the South is evident in nearly everything he accomplished. For this episode, we interview Tim Huebner, Professor of History at Rhodes College, who recently published a remarkable article for the Journal of Supreme Court History entitled Memphis and the Making of Justice Fortas. It is perhaps the best examination of this city's impact on the man, and it is chock full of detail and fascinating anecdotes. If you're a Memphis history buff and care about equality and fairness, you'll love our conversation. 

For our first episode of the new year, we spoke to the mayor of Gary, Indiana, Karen Freeman-Wilson. Mayor Freeman-Wilson co-chairs the committee on criminal and social justice for the US Conference of Mayors and helped produce that section of the mayors' agenda entitled Leadership for America: Mayors' Agenda for the Future. Read more about the Mayors' Safety and Security Plan here.During our interview, the Mayor helped us locate Gary on a map, we talked about the importance of right-sizing our criminal justice system, and she gave us some behind the scenes scoop from her time as an Undercover Boss.

Richard Ransom has been covering the news in Memphis for more than 20 years, and recently became Weeknight Anchor and Managing Editor for Local 24 News. Shortly after beginning his new role, Richard stated “Reporting crime all the time is not a responsible or accurate reflection of life in our city, and I am proud to work with a news team that wants to inform you, not scare you.” This edition of The Permanent Record examines exactly what he meant by that and looks to a more productive and honest future of how crime and public safety can be portrayed by local broadcast news outlets.

For our third interview in Just City's continuing examination of the link between mass media and public policy, we spoke with Eric Barnes, Publisher and CEO of the Memphis Daily News and host of "Behind the Headlines" on WKNO-TV. A twenty-year veteran of Mid-south publishing, Eric describes the rapidly evolving business models that are driving the way daily print outlets report the news and the indelible effects it has on the way people think about the public safety of their local communities -- as well as the responses that local officials and lawmakers have to these perceptions. Tune in for our fourth and final media podcast, when we speak with Local Memphis' Anchor and Managing Editor Richard Ransom about a refreshing new perspective on crime coverage by local television news outlets.

For our second interview in a series of four episodes in which we'll be interviewing the interviewers, and looking at the unique role that the media plays in covering the criminal justice system, we interviewed Jessica Pishko of the Fair Punishment Project. Jessica graduated from Harvard Law School and writes frequently about criminal justice issues, especially prosecutors and their influential role in the system. Her award-winning writing has appeared in The Nation, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Pacific Standard, and San Francisco Magazine.We talked to Jessica about her recent article in The Nation about state district attorney associations and their resistance to almost all reform efforts and about the realities facing writers in this new era of journalism.Make sure you listen to our third episode in the series; it's coming soon. In it, Kerry Hayes talks to Eric Barnes, editor of the Memphis Daily News about issues facing journalists in Memphis.

This interview with NPR's Carrie Johnson marks our first in a series of four episodes in which we'll be interviewing the interviewers, and looking at the unique role that the media plays in covering the criminal justice system. Carrie joined NPR News in 2010. She covers the Justice Department closely and has reported extensively on its agreement with the Shelby County Juvenile Court.Speaking from NPR headquarters in Washington, Carrie described a day in the life of a public radio correspondent, explained how things have changed for her since the 2016 election, and she even shared some of her sports allegiances. (Cubs fans beware!) We hope you enjoy the conversation.Make sure you listen to our second episode in the series; it's coming soon. In it, we talk to Jessica Pishko of the Fair Punishment Project about the new realities in journalism and the balance between advocacy and news.

Allison Gibbs is a Florida native, who moved to Memphis to teach and organize communities around education. Seeing the damage that the criminal justice system was doing to the communities where she taught and organized, she shifted her focus and effort to criminal justice reform. She became Just City's first employee in the summer of 2015. Since then, Allison has essentially helped build a non-profit from the ground up. A bit unexpectedly, she became the resident expert in nonprofit tax filings, audits, and all manner of accounting principles, not to mention the author of a few of Just City's programs, she is looking to what's next. Sadly, for us, that is taking her back home to Florida and her family. We recorded this 'exit interview' with Allison a few days before she moved.

Marco Pavè is an activist, a musician, and a Memphis native. Earlier this year, he released the album "Welcome to Grc Lnd," which documents an exceptionally turbulent period in Memphis' recent history, including the 2016 Black Lives Matter protests at the Hernando-DeSoto Bridge and Elvis Presley's Graceland. Marco believes that artists have a unique responsibility to capture and share the stories of their communities in times of turmoil. Events in Memphis over the past several years have given him no shortage of material.This fall, Marco and fellow rapper James Onyx Casher are launching the Universal Plug Society Tour, which they describe "as a collaborative platform for independent artists, created by independent artists, that combines music, fashion, and culinary arts to challenge the stigma around cannabis culture." As they visit cities from St. Louis to Portland, they will be working to raise awareness for common sense changes to cannabis laws and other important criminal justice reforms. Just before he left for the UPS Tour, we spoke to Marco about what he hoped to accomplish and how hip-hop can play a role in moving America forward on this issue.