Podcast appearances and mentions of brian sonenstein

Brian Sonenstein interviews a woman we’re calling “Alice” to protect her and her family from retaliation from California prison officials.  Alice was on Beyond Prisons in April 2020 to discuss the situation facing people enduring the pandemic while incarcerated at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, California. If you haven’t heard that episode yet, you may want to listen to it first for added context: https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-from-california-prison In this conversation, Alice tells us about a recent protest held at Soledad and how women have been fighting for months for prison officials to improve health care measures inside the facility, which has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in not just the state prison system, but in California.  She describes how corrections officers have refused to wear masks and retaliated against incarcerated people for getting CDCR to mandate them. She talks about how people are struggling to eat without access to the commissary and how unresponsive CDCR has been to family members throughout the pandemic. We also discuss how the public’s attention to COVID-19 in jails and prisons seems to be waning at a time when we’re seeing the highest case counts yet. Families are planning a protest for January 16 at 10 AM in Sacramento. For more information, contact Alice at Strongertogether1229@gmail.com. Episode Notes & Resources COVID-19 Dispatch From California Prison (April 2020) https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-from-california-prison Shadowproof’s Marvel Cooke Journalism Fellowship https://shadowproof.com/2020/11/17/shadowproof-launches-marvel-cooke-journalism-fellowship/ Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: @beyondprisonspodcast Instagram: @beyondprisons

Professor, author, and abolitionist scholar Dr. Dylan Rodríguez joins Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein on an episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast.  This is the first part of a two part conversation. In Part 1, Dr. Rodríguez explains his belief that abolition is our obligation, touching on the development of anti-Black algorithms used to keep people in prison, what it means to be vulnerable in the context of doing this work and how vulnerability is the starting point for an abolitionist practice, and the profound impact that Robert Allen’s book Black Awakening in Capitalist America had on shaping Dylan’s own thinking.  We also talk about how academia declares institutional solidarity with white supremacy, and how some academics are the planners and architects of domestic war. Dr. Rodríguez reminds us that terror is not a thing that you can fix with training and he shares some of the conditions he places on conversations about prison reform.  Dylan Rodríguez is President of the American Studies Association (2020-2021). He served as the faculty-elected Chair of the UC Riverside Academic Senate (2016-2020) and a Professor at the University of California, Riverside. He spent the first sixteen years of his career in the Department of Ethnic Studies (serving as Chair from 2009-2016) and joined the Department of Media and Cultural Studies in 2017. Dylan’s thinking, writing, teaching, and scholarly activist labors address the complexity and normalized proliferation of historical regimes and logics of anti-Black and racial-colonial violence in everyday state, cultural, and social formations.  His work raises the question of how insurgent communities of people inhabit oppressive regimes and logics in ways that enable the collective genius of rebellion, survival, abolition, and radical futurity. What forms of shared creativity emerge from conditions of duress, and how do these insurgencies envision—and practice—transformations of power and community?   In addition to co-editing the field-shaping anthology Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke University Press, 2016), Dylan is the author of two books: Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). His next book, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide, is forthcoming from Fordham University Press in Fall 2020 and will be followed in 2021 by White Reconstruction II.  Follow Dylan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dylanrodriguez Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein are joined by historian and abolitionist David Stein for an episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast. David penned an excellent article in 2017 with Dan Berger and Mariame Kaba entitled, “What Abolitionists Do." He reflects on this article in this moment of greater awareness of abolition and shares his thoughts and experiences from spending time in abolitionist spaces. David Stein is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA. His book manuscript, Fearing Inflation, Inflating Fears: The Civil Rights Struggle for Full Employment and the Rise of the Carceral State, 1929-1986, is forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press. It describes the political economy of unemployment and efforts to win a federal governmental job guarantee, and how this struggle impacted the ascent of mass incarceration. His research focuses on the interconnection between social movements, public policy, and political economy in post-1865 U.S. history. He has been a member of Critical Resistance since 2006, though his comments in this interview are not on behalf of the organization. Episode Resources "What Abolitionists Do" by Dan Berger, Mariame Kaba, and David Stein David Stein's website: https://davidpstein.wordpress.com/ Follow David on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidpStein Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

[ INTERNAL VOICE LOG :  ANGEL-CLASS SHIP A456-J7N “CATACLYSM” :: CAPTAIN’S LOG : CAPTAIN AYAT AYER  :: TIMESTAMP : 68 YEARS AGO ] System check.  …  All system’s nominal.  This is Captain Ayat Ayer of the A456 Cataclysm. Beginning asynchronous gate-independent transit from Homily to unidentified exoplanet Zeta orbiting star 948-Endymion. Distance 4.98 light years. Bearing 283.6, all systems nominal. Clearances: 89427, 673-gold, Y-351.  Transit is estimated at 46 hours from Homily to Zeta. Distortion estimated at 0.004%. Asynchronous gate drive running at 99.887% power, 27% capacity. Margin of error, 0.17%.  Initiating asynchronous gate drive in 5… 4… 3… 2…  Wish me luck.  This week, on Tango Sector: After their falling out with the crew of Pelagian, Cash Black sets out on their own path to set things right, and picks up a well-paying job for Synchronicity with a new acquaintance along the way.    BLACK LIVES MATTER AND POLICE/PRISON ABOLITION RESOURCES: Listen: Radical Imagination, on Police Abolition - https://radicalimagination.us/episodes/police-abolition The Appeal, What Abolitionists Mean When They Talk About Abolition (with William C. Anderson) - https://theappeal.org/the-appeal-podcast-episode-7-what-abolitionists-mean-when-they-talk-about-abolition/ The Beyond Prisons Podcast, hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein - https://shadowproof.com/beyond-prisons/ Read: Starer resources - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wdmTPwiZkiPZnwKauzmcZLqUTdUe00WrCIwj7r4A7Zk/edit?usp=sharing Prisons, Police & Abolition syllabus - https://becauseweveread.com/index.php/book/prisons-police-abolition/ Twitter thread of resources  - https://twitter.com/time2ryot/status/1265707093509566469?s=20 The End of Policing by Alex S Vitale (free Ebook) - https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing Against Police Violence collection (free Ebook) - https://sevenstories.com/books/4260-against-police-violence A World Without Police - http://aworldwithoutpolice.org/ Donate & Support: Ways to Support Black Lives Matter - https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ Ways to support Black Trans People - https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/ways-you-can-support-the-black-lgbtq-community.html   Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/unexploredcast Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/unexploredcast Art by Julianne Stone: https://twitter.com/Juli_Aria Music by Andrew: https://andrewperricone.bandcamp.com/

[ an excerpt from a public access pamphlet entitled UNINCORPORATION TODAY: A MANIFESTO FOR MOVEMENT, pseudonymously attributed to Professor Emeritus ] “Union” used to be a word that meant something: solidarity, collectivity, cooperation, unity. It used to be a word which stood for something, against the hegemonic control of capitalist interest and the fungibility of worker. It may seem like ancient history now, but at one point a “union” meant a collective of workers. Our Union is a lie, a corruption of the very idea of what a union should be. Our Union calls itself a union while mechanics and engineers on Torus Station die of dehydration because the rich on Themis withhold their water. Our Union calls itself a union while factory workers on Thistle develop lung infections from the pollution levels because the rich on Themis refuse to share their air filters and purifiers. Our Union calls itself a union while miners on Snowmelt freeze to death trying to meet their quotas because Blackford & Desai needs to mass-produce engines for luxury ships that sit in dock to let the rich flaunt their wealth. What we need is not a Union: what we need is a unity. What we need is to spread the word, far and wide, that the Union does not have our best interests at heart, and that when we stand together we are more numerous, more powerful, more valuable than the Union is. What we need is to spread the word that they know we are more numerous, more powerful, more valuable than the Union is. What we need is movement: together, as one, against those who would see us starve to put food on their table, to see us suffocate so that their air is clean. What we need is to move beyond the reaches of the Sector as the Union has defined them and understand that there are better, more possible ways of living beyond their narrow constraints, and all we need to find those is each other.  This week, on Tango Sector: After a smooth entrance breaking into the Martinet prison on Rho, the crew of Pelagian comes across an unexpected complication in their attempt to break out Emeritus Na. Claus plants a disruptor. Liam does what he does best. Flux gets showy. Baz gets explosive.    BLACK LIVES MATTER AND POLICE/PRISON ABOLITION RESOURCES: Listen: Radical Imagination, on Police Abolition - https://radicalimagination.us/episodes/police-abolition The Appeal, What Abolitionists Mean When They Talk About Abolition (with William C. Anderson) - https://theappeal.org/the-appeal-podcast-episode-7-what-abolitionists-mean-when-they-talk-about-abolition/ The Beyond Prisons Podcast, hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein - https://shadowproof.com/beyond-prisons/ Read: Starer resources - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wdmTPwiZkiPZnwKauzmcZLqUTdUe00WrCIwj7r4A7Zk/edit?usp=sharing Prisons, Police & Abolition syllabus - https://becauseweveread.com/index.php/book/prisons-police-abolition/ Twitter thread of resources  - https://twitter.com/time2ryot/status/1265707093509566469?s=20 The End of Policing by Alex S Vitale (free Ebook) - https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing Against Police Violence collection (free Ebook) - https://sevenstories.com/books/4260-against-police-violence A World Without Police - http://aworldwithoutpolice.org/ Donate & Support: Ways to Support Black Lives Matter - https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ Ways to support Black Trans People - https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/ways-you-can-support-the-black-lgbtq-community.html   Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/unexploredcast Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/unexploredcast Art by Julianne Stone: https://twitter.com/Juli_Aria Music by Andrew: https://andrewperricone.bandcamp.com/

[[ COMMUNICATIONS ARCHIVE OF SLEEPER-CLASS SHIP S-7680 “THE ARENDT” // LAST RECEIVED TRANSMISSION // COMMUNICATION SIGNATURE: EMERITUS NA ]]  Monument— I think we’re really getting close, finally, to putting this plan into action. Keep on track and let Baz know I’ll be needing a favor from them in a few days. Might want to get your bags packed and have Glitch keep his ear to the ground, so to speak, for anything coming out of the Court.  More coming tomorrow.  —Na  This week, on Tango Sector: Working alongside the Unity Anti-Union Unincorporation, the crew of Pelagian scopes out a hidden black site prison on the surface of the abandoned planet Rho in order to break out Unity’s incarcerated leader. Claus does some tinkering. Liam gathers some invaluable intel. Flux looks for options. Baz takes control.   BLACK LIVES MATTER AND POLICE/PRISON ABOLITION RESOURCES: Listen: Radical Imagination, on Police Abolition - https://radicalimagination.us/episodes/police-abolition The Appeal, What Abolitionists Mean When They Talk About Abolition (with William C. Anderson) - https://theappeal.org/the-appeal-podcast-episode-7-what-abolitionists-mean-when-they-talk-about-abolition/ The Beyond Prisons Podcast, hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein - https://shadowproof.com/beyond-prisons/ Read: Starer resources - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wdmTPwiZkiPZnwKauzmcZLqUTdUe00WrCIwj7r4A7Zk/edit?usp=sharing Prisons, Police & Abolition syllabus - https://becauseweveread.com/index.php/book/prisons-police-abolition/ Twitter thread of resources  - https://twitter.com/time2ryot/status/1265707093509566469?s=20 The End of Policing by Alex S Vitale (free Ebook) - https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing Against Police Violence collection (free Ebook) - https://sevenstories.com/books/4260-against-police-violence A World Without Police - http://aworldwithoutpolice.org/ Donate & Support: Ways to Support Black Lives Matter - https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ Ways to support Black Trans People - https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/ways-you-can-support-the-black-lgbtq-community.html   Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/unexploredcast Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/unexploredcast Art by Julianne Stone: https://twitter.com/Juli_Aria Music by Andrew: https://andrewperricone.bandcamp.com/

Beyond Prisons hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson sit down with Anthony Williams to talk about co-founding the hashtag "#MasculinitySoFragile," leveraging social capital online, how their political consciousness evolved over time, and overcoming isolation through reading. We recorded this episode in early March just as the pandemic was gaining steam. The subsequent weeks have forced us all to contend with a new reality that intensifies our vulnerability and underscores the need for organizing and collective liberation. Anthony talks about cultivating joy as we live with trauma, and tells us why we should all read "Pleasure Activism" by Adrianne Maree Brown.  Anthony James Williams is a Black queer non-binary writer, sociology PhD student, and facilitator. Online, they’re responsible for co-creating and popularizing the hashtags #MasculinitySoFragile and #BlackWomenDidThat. Offline, their prior Black student organizing led the University of California system to divest $25 million from private prisons in 2016. Find them on Twitter @anthoknees or antjwilliams.com.  Episode Resources The painful & personal process of Black Consciousness Sandra Bland: Beware the day they change their mind! The Year in Creating Black Joy social justice work is exhausting: ableism, racism, and joy Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Brian Sonenstein interviews a woman who we’re calling “Alice” to protect her and her husband from retaliation by California prison officials. Alice organizes with other family members as part of a group known as Unite Against CDCR. Her husband is incarcerated in Soledad, California at the Correctional Training Facility (CTF)—one of the prisons where Gladiator Fights have taken place over the last few years. She shared some of what she has heard and experienced herself regarding the prison’s response to the pandemic. We compare and contrast what California prison officials say they are doing in response to the crisis with what Alice has heard is happening at CTF. We also discuss how the prison is reacting to efforts by her husband and other prisoners to protect themselves. Episode Resources Unite Against CDCR Petition: Tell CDCR TO Allow All Inmates Access To Tablets & Email Reporting on Gladiator Fights Contact Unite Against CDCR at UNITEAGAINSTCDCRCORRUPTION@GMAIL.COM    Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Beyond Prisons hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein walk through our guide on how to support incarcerated people and their loved ones during the Coronavirus Crisis. You can check it out along with some demands we put together, mutual aid resources, and more on our new website at beyond-prisons.com/covid19. Many, many thanks to everyone who worked with us to pull this together and who have contacted us to volunteer. We’re sincerely grateful. Please share this guide with your friends, your family, on social media, wherever you can, if you find it helpful. We want to get it into the hands of as many people as it can help, and we will continue to update it in the coming days and weeks so please check back.  Additionally, if you have any regional or facility-specific suggestions for people supporting their loved ones on the inside, please submit them using our form. We’re trying to pool information that is helpful to everyone while having specific locally relevant suggestions as well. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

On this episode of the Beyond Prisons Podcast, hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson catch up with  Certain Days Collective members Daniel McGowan, Josh Davidson, and Sara Falconer. The group publishes the Certain Days: Freedom For Political Prisoners calendar, now in its 19th year of publication and filled with radical historical dates, 12 thought-provoking articles and beautiful artwork for each month throughout the year. All proceeds support prisoners and grassroots organizations, and we urge you to visit certaindays.org to obtain copies of their beautiful 2020 edition, the theme of which is “Knitting Together The Struggles.” The five of us discuss the artwork and articles that make up the calendar, as well as the difficult-but-extensive and necessary collaboration with incarcerated people throughout the year to produce it. We also touch on subjects such as the importance of charting radical history, prisoners’ relationship to time, and the value of having such a beautiful and thought-provoking calendar available to people on the inside. Daniel McGowan is a former political prisoner and former member of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). He has been involved with political prisoner support for most of his activist life and is currently a member of the Certain Days collective. Josh Davidson has been an activist for two decades now, focusing on prisoner support and the abolition of the carceral state. He is actively working to start a Books Through Bars program in Baltimore, MD, where he also works on community organizing and against police brutality. Sara Falconer has been working to raise the voices of prisoners for over 18 years, collaborating on projects such as 4strugglemag.org, a zine by and for prisoners, and the Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar. She is a member of the Barton Prisoner Solidarity Project in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Buy the Certain Days calendar and learn more about the collective at certaindays.org Certain Days on Facebook @certaindays on Twitter @certaindayscalendar on Instagram Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

In a followup to the last episode, "Stop Hugging Cops," Beyond Prisons hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson share some resources and discuss alternatives to calling the police. We talk about the chain reaction that is created by bringing the police to a community or into an individual’s life, and we suggest ways to scrutinize the impulse to call the police. Brian also calls on White people to consider what it means for them to call the police on Black and Brown people and offers some thoughts for how white people can do better in situations that generally don’t require intervention. Kim also shares some of what she has learned from transformative justice work and what communities can do to address harm without state intervention. This episode is chock full of insights, ideas, suggestions, and lessons, and it is by no means a comprehensive account of alternatives to calling the police, but it does provide a place to begin. Resources & Additional Reading "Chain Reaction: Alternatives To Calling Police" by Project NIA "Abolition Of Policing Workshop" by Critical Resistance "Alternatives To Police" by Rose City Cop Watch "12 Things To Do Instead Of Calling The Cops" by the May Day Collective and Washtenaw Solidarity & Defense "What To Do Instead Of Calling The Police" by Aaron Rose Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

In this episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast, hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein discuss a video published by Critical Resistance that features Professor Dylan Rodriguez talking about policing and police practice. We encourage you to spend a few minutes watching the video before listening to this episode. We chose this video because Professor Rodriguez helps us to interrogate the way that we think about the police. He makes the case for why "policing" is a more accurate term than "police brutality" and urges us to think about why some people need to demonstrate their humanity by hugging cops. Brian and Kim use the points by Professor Rodriguez to further discuss what it means when abolitionists and other activists are willing to make exceptions for some people to go to prison, and what kinds of conversations we need to have to shift peoples' consciousness about punishment. We push back against the idea that prison and other legal punishments are forms of accountability and lay the groundwork for other upcoming episodes on this topic. Resources & Additional Reading [Video] Breaking Down The Prison Industrial Complex with Professor Dylan Rodriguez: "It's Not Police Brutality" Critical Resistance - Breaking Down The Prison Industrial Complex Video Series Reformist Reforms vs. Abolitionist Steps in Policing Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

On this episode, Anoa is joined by Brian Sonenstein of Shadowproof and the Beyond Prisons podcast. Brian and Anoa discuss Joe Biden's rollout and the calls for "context" around his support for the 1994 Crime Bill. Anoa and Brian parse through the calls for context, providing actual context to the discussion. There is a racist subtext to the conversation. Positioning the conversation as an attack or undermining the effort underway prioritizes the feelings and needs of someone who spent his career supporting and advocating for some of the most draconian laws of the modern political era. Despite all the praise and supposedly "wokeness" achieved after 13th, too many liberals are willing to cast aside real opportunities for progress to slide back. There are several good articles that lay out the issues with Biden's criminal justice record. This doesn't even begin to address his issues across multiple other areas. Accountability and Justice is critical to many communities and that should not be set aside because a wealthy white man who is politically connected decides to run for president a fourth time. More reading: Blacks Relent on Crime Bill, But Not Without Bitterness Experts Doubt Effectiveness Of Crime Bill Joe Biden's Role in '90s Crime Law Could Haunt Any Presidential Bid Don't Run, Uncle Joe

In the first episode of 2019, hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein begin a conversation on transformative justice by discussing the concept of “Pods” and the process of “Pod-mapping.” These exercises involve developing skills and identifying relationships that are key to intervening in harm and providing the kind of support that accountability can demand. Listeners can learn more and follow this conversation more closely via the following materials: Pods and Pod-Mapping Worksheet by Mia Mingus & Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective Creative Interventions Toolkit Think; Re-Think by Connie Burk (The Revolution Starts At Home) Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Jared Ware joins episode 28 of Beyond Prisons to discuss this year's prison strike. Recorded in the midst of the strike on August 30, co-hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson have a conversation with Ware about the strike's progress, as well as the challenges of organizing and why the press is woefully unprepared to report on the action. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein @jaybeware Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

The prison is an institution that is sustained by violence and justified by myths. On this episode, we're talking about the "radical imagination" required to build a society without such an institution.To guide us through this very broad topic are Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson, hosts of the Beyond Prisons podcast. Brian is a journalist (with a regular column in the Portland Phoenix) and a co-founder of Shadowproof.com. Kim Wilson has a Ph.D. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware, and aside from being an activist and podcast host, she is also an artist, whose work you can see at kimwilsonart.com. Their podcast focuses on all issues related to prison abolition, and we can't recommend it enough.Check them out at shadowproof.com/beyond-prisons!

Hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein discuss Operation PUSH: a nonviolent prison labor strike and boycott in Florida that began on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Brian talks about what he's learned from reporting on the action and the intense retaliation by state prison official against suspected organizers. We go over the goals and demands of Operation PUSH and how prison officials are denying the strike is even happening. We talk about what has happened to Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, a political prisoner in Florida who was thrown in a cold cell without a working toilet for writing an article about the action, and how the public rallied behind him to have him moved to a different cell. We also examine this action's intersection with climate change and the environment, as well as how Operation PUSH fits in to the larger movement against prison slavery that has experienced a resurgence in the last two years. Finally, Kim and Brian have a broad discussion of the dynamics of prison rebellions and how prison systems seek to control information, and how this influences journalism and popular discourse surrounding these events. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Sign up for the Beyond Prisons newsletter to receive updates on new episodes, important news and events, and more. Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein @jaybeware Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music & Production: Jared Ware

In Episode 19 of Beyond Prisons, hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson catch up with activist, writer, and educator Mariame Kaba. Mariame shares her experiences advocating on behalf of Bresha Meadows, a teenage girl who killed her abusive father and was detained while facing the possibility of trial as an adult and a lifetime of incarceration. She recount's Bresha's story and explains how activists worked to make sure the family's needs were met and help them navigate the collateral consequences of detention, including an enormous financial burden and the shame and stigma that makes people internalize their struggle. Mariame explains how children who are abused face limited options and harsh punishment for trying to escape their abusers and even harsher punishment for defending themselves. She talks about the racialized aspect of this arrangement, and how black children are dehumanized and not seen as children but as criminals in training. She discusses the work that Survived and Punished put into assembling a tool kit to help people who are victims of abuse and are criminalized for survival actions. The tool kit has information on what the group thinks works for supporting immigrant survivors, trans survivors, how to engage with the media and legal teams, how to raise money and build a base of support, and more. Their website also has interviews and videos that provide more information. Mariame reacts to a common question asked of abolitionists, which is what to do about people who have caused serious harm to others. She talks about the fear of criminals in society and the severe misperceptions among the public of who is incarcerated and what it means to be in prison. The effectiveness of prison as a tool to fight sexual violence, murder, and other serious crimes is questioned. The conversation continues with Mariame's view of abolition as a collective project that embraces people who sense there is a problem with American institutions and are interested in figuring out what to do about it. She explains what she means when she says hope is a discipline, not an emotion or sense of optimism, and how this informs her organizing. Self care is examined as a community project. Finally, Mariame shares what books are on her shelf and what she's reading right now. Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, and curator. Her work focuses on ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial complex, transformative justice, and supporting youth leadership development. She is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. She was a member of the editorial board for Violence Against Women: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal from January 2003 to December 2008. She was a founding advisory board member of the Chicago Community Bond Fund and she's a member of the Critical Resistance community advisory board. Kaba currently organizes with the Survived and Punished collective and, in addition to organizing and serving many other organizations, she is an educator and also runs the blog Prison Culture. Follow Mariame Kaba on Twitter: @prisonculture Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Sign up for the Beyond Prisons newsletter to receive updates on new episodes, important news and events, and more. Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein @jaybeware Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music & Production: Jared Ware

Artist, writer, and organizer Devyn Springer joins the Beyond Prisons podcast for a special two-part episode. In part two, Devyn speaks with hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein about hip hop scholarship and pedagogy as liberatory approaches to education. We also discuss his photography, writing, and poetry. Devyn explains his scholarship focuses on hip hop as a means of resistance. He talks about how, as one of most influential art forms of the past century, hip hop has always been about race, class, and gender, and that it tells stories and histories. He discusses the importance of having students see themselves in the material he teaches, explaining how the work of Walter Rodney has influenced his own practice. We also discuss Devyn's photography and writing, including a piece he wrote about the Pulse Nightclub shooting. He sees his art as a way to combat the normalization of oppression and  the idea that oppression is an essential part of human existence and human nature. We explore a piece Devyn wrote on writers block as a socioeconomic condition. He talks about the struggle to create art that exists for beauty itself when he's only given a platform to discuss his identity and trauma. He explains how marginalized artists and writers are only called upon to appease someone else's diversity quota, and how white artists are primarily the only ones permitted to create art simply for its beauty, while artists of color must make a statement about their identity in order to be given a platform. He raises the class aspect of this dynamic, explaining that staff writing positions are rarely available and that when opportunities are available, they are low paying and exclusively for him to write from the perspective of his identity as someone who is Black, Muslim and queer. The anxiety this creates hinders the writing process itself. Finally, we discuss the concept of self-care with Devyn, which he sees as "being an adult" and "doing what you need to do to secure your livelihood." He argues self-care should be done to "alleviate your conditions temporarily so you can continue doing your organizing and your work." Devyn Springer is an Atlanta-based artist, writer, organizer, and educator with a background in African & African Diaspora studies and a concentration in Art History. He has worked with various organizing groups in Atlanta such as Rise UP, It's Bigger Than You, Black Lives Matter, and is a member of Workers World Party. He is the assistant editor of two peer-reviewed academic journals, South and ATL. His first book of poetry & art is titled "Grayish-Black,” and you can follow him on Twitter @HalfAtlanta, and see some of his visual art at Urbansoulatlanta.com Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Sign up for the Beyond Prisons newsletter to receive updates on new episodes, important news and events, and more. Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein @jaybeware Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music & Production: Jared Ware

Artist, writer, and organizer Devyn Springer joins the Beyond Prisons podcast for a special two-part episode. In part one, Devyn speaks with hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein about his work with mental health response networks in Atlanta. Through Rise UP, Black Lives Matter, and other groups, Devyn has worked to confront mental health emergencies through deescalation and by building relationships in the community. We discuss how the presence of police, and threat of violence that accompanies them, exacerbates manic episodes. We also talk about the dangers of making police the first responders in times of crisis, as well as the defunding and dissolution of mental health services in the community, which have shifted to prisons and jails. We talk about how these facilities do not and cannot provide an adequate therapeutic environment, and how situating treatment in the justice system has encouraged a defensive posture, in which we are dealing with crises more than providing ongoing support and treatment before they happen. Finally, we examine the recent killing of Scout Schultz, a student at Georgia Tech who had a history of mental illness, as well as the response to Scout's death by other students. Devyn Springer is an Atlanta-based artist, writer, organizer, and educator with a background in African & African Diaspora studies and a concentration in Art History. He has worked with various organizing groups in Atlanta such as Rise UP, It's Bigger Than You, Black Lives Matter, and is a member of Workers World Party. He is the assistant editor of two peer-reviewed academic journals, South and ATL. His first book of poetry & art is titled "Grayish-Black,” and you can follow him on Twitter @HalfAtlanta, and see some of his visual art at Urbansoulatlanta.com Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Sign up for the Beyond Prisons newsletter to receive updates on new episodes, important news and events, and more. Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein @jaybeware Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music & Production: Jared Ware

Hosts of the "Unauthorized Disclosure" weekly podcast welcome Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein, co-hosts of the "Beyond Prisons" podcast, to the show. Wilson and Sonenstein discuss their new show, which covers prisons and prison reform from an abolitionist perspective. It elevates people directly impacted by the system of mass incarceration by featuring their voices. In the latter half of the episode, a short segment highlights how CIA torture architects James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen invoked the cases of accused Nazi war criminals to argue they should not be held responsible for torture.

On episode 10 of Beyond Prisons, we talk about Thomas Gordon, who is incarcerated at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, a state prison in Delaware. Vaughn was the site of what has been called the Vaughn Rebellion, an uprising last February in response to horrendous living conditions that was met with brutal repression by corrections officers. Thomas wrote an open letter after the rebellion, which described their demands for human rights, including a proper diet, an adequate grievance process, and access to programs and education. Thomas's friend Emily Abendroth joins hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson to talk about her friendship with Thomas, the open letter, and what she's learned from their correspondence. We discuss the risks and dangers Thomas faces in doing this work, the response from state officials and the media to the rebellion, and how officials have sought to increase their power in the aftermath by blaming staffing and security issues instead of addressing the root causes outlined by those incarcerated at Vaughn. Emily Abendroth is a poet, teacher and anti-prison activist living in Philadelphia. She is an active organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (a grassroots campaign working to end life without parole sentencing in Pennsylvania) and is co-founder of Address This! (an education and empowerment project that provides innovative, social justice correspondence courses to individuals incarcerated in Pennsylvania) and LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty (a media project conducted across the prison walls to highlight the voices and analysis of those serving death by incarceration sentences).  Her published works include the poetry book ]Exclosures[ and The Instead, a collaborative book with fiction writer Miranda Mellis, as well as numerous poetry chapbooks. Follow Emily's work at: Lifelines-project.org, Decarceratepa.info/cadbi, and https://www.facebook.com/DecarceratePA Full Disclosure: Kim has two sons incarcerated at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Sign up for the Beyond Prisons newsletter to receive updates on new episodes, important news and events, and more. Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music & Production: Jared Ware

Dan Berger joins Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson for episode 9 of Beyond Prisons to discuss his book, "Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era." We begin the conversation by looking at whose voices are heard in conversations on mass incarceration and the importance of telling the history of this struggle from the vantage point of incarcerated people. Dan explains that although jails and courtrooms have been critical battlegrounds for Black people's human rights movements throughout American history, the influence of Black prison organizing is often glossed over, despite its central role in struggles from emancipation to the 1960's era civil rights movement and beyond. We discuss the increasing use of prisons as props in mainstream culture, where the focus is placed on the phenomenon of mass incarceration instead of the problem that is prison. We also talk about the erasure of Black political prisoners, who have their revolutionary ideas stolen from them by white American and European intellectuals. In addition to telling us what abolition means to him, Dan shares how letter writing with Black political prisoners was formative to his understanding of race, capitalism, and incarceration in America from a young age. Dan Berger is an associate professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He is the author of several books and won the 2015 James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians for "Captive Nation." Buy "Captive Nation" from UNC Press. Follow Dan Berger on Twitter @dnbrgr. Read Dan's work at AAIHS. Free Alabama Movement: http://www.freealabamamovement.com/ Jailhouse Lawyers Speak: https://www.facebook.com/BlkJailhouselawyer/ Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Sign up for the Beyond Prisons newsletter to receive updates on new episodes, important news and events, and more. Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music & Production: Jared Ware

In episode 6 of Beyond Prisons, Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson speak with Maya Schenwar about her book, "Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better."  Maya discusses her experience living a "dual reality" as a journalist covering incarceration and as someone with a sibling who has been incarcerated multiple times while struggling with addiction. She shares her thoughts on the detachment common among journalists who cover the justice system and how their relationships with law enforcement are accepted as standard. "The view from nowhere is a view from power," she said. She also talks about the importance of pen-palling with incarcerated people and how it has shaped her work and knowledge of the issue.  We talk about the struggles facing incarcerated mothers and pregnant women—from the various ways they are forced into the prison system to their experiences finding basic, humane medical treatment behind bars and the harm of separating families. In this emotional interview, we hear from Maya about her sister's struggle and how her family has been impacted by this experience. If you have read the book, you'll want to tune in because Maya shares what has happened since it was published. "When you break up particularly a mother and her newborn child, you are saying this person should not be reconnected with society, this person should be isolated, and separated, and shamed, and disposed of," Maya said.  Finally, she tells us what abolition means to her. Maya is the Editor-in-Chief of Truthout and the co-editor of "Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States." She has written about the prison-industrial complex for Truthout, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, Ms. Magazine, and others. Maya lives in Chicago and organizes with Love & Protect and the Chicago Community Bond Fund. Get your copy of "Locked Down, Locked Out." Read Maya Schenwar's work at Truthout: ">www.truthout.org Visit Maya's personal website: mayaschenwar.com Follow Maya on Twitter: @mayaschenwar   --   Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Sign up for the Beyond Prisons newsletter to receive updates on new episodes, important news and events, and more. Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music & Production: Jared Ware  

Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson speak with Akeem Browder, founder of the campaign to Shut Down Rikers Island and the Kalief Browder Foundation. Akeem’s brother, Kalief, died by suicide in 2015 after spending three years at the notorious jail complex. His tragic story helped catalyze reform efforts in New York City. During the interview, Akeem tells the story of his own unjust arrest and experiences on Rikers as a young teenager, years before Kalief's incarceration. He relates how they both experienced the New York City Department Of Corrections' infamous culture of brutality firsthand and endured numerous assaults by law enforcement and other inmates. He shares advice he gave Kalief based on his own experiences and addresses the urgent need to improve mental health research, diagnoses, and treatment regarding incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Akeem also comments on the status of the campaign to close Rikers Island and the $1 billion earmarked for new "community jails." He described his experiences working with Mayor Bill de Blasio and other advocates in the city. He also tells us what abolition means to him. Kalief arrived at Rikers in 2010 at age 16, when he was arrested and accused of stealing a backpack. He maintained his innocence and spent 800 days in solitary confinement. His case never went to trial and he was never convicted of a crime. The case was eventually dismissed and Kalief was released. A little over one year after Kalief's death, their mother, Venida Browder, passed away from what has been described as a "broken heart." Akeem honors the legacy of his brother Kalief and mother Venida by working with elected officials, lawyers, doctors, college students and community based organizations to change laws, policies and regulations that devastate poor communities and families impacted by mass incarceration and solitary confinement. Follow Shut Down Rikers Island on Twitter: @ShutDownRikers Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Send us tips, comments, and questions: beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Music & Production: Jared Ware

In this candid and personal interview, Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson speak with Five Mualimm-ak about his life, reintegration, and why he's fighting to abolish prisons by any means necessary. In the late 1990s, Five was a community leader and successful real estate investor until he was convicted of crimes he didn't commit. He spent 12 years in prison, including 5 years in solitary confinement. On the day of his release, Five had a panic attack that landed him in the emergency room and then at Bellevue. Homeless for two years, he went back to prison for failing to appear for a meeting with his PO, and he was sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence. These and other experiences have informed Five's expansive and influential work with communities directly impacted by incarceration in New York and across the nation. Learn more about Five's work: Incarcerated Nation Corporation (INC) Follow Five on Twitter: @MrFiveINC -- Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes. Send us tips, comments, and questions: beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Music & Production: Jared Ware

Do we need prisons? This week, Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein discuss Angela Davis' book, "Are Prisons Obsolete?" The book is an excellent starting point for people who are new to prison abolition and for anyone who wants to better understand the prison industrial complex. Kim and Brian pick out some of their favorite sections, digging deeper into topics like the inevitability of prisons and the religious foundations of incarceration. They also talk about the various struggles facing incarcerated women, and how prisons touch all of our lives even if we've never been incarcerated. --- Read "Are Prisons Obsolete?" by Angela Davis Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes. Send us tips, comments, and questions: beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Music & Production: Jared Ware

Welcome to Beyond Prisons: a new podcast examining incarceration in America through an abolitionist lens.  In our first episode, hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein introduce the idea behind the podcast, dissect and critique the current conversation around prison reform, and discuss the need for a broader vision for justice that should guide those efforts. What is prison abolition and what would it mean to live in a world without prisons? What's missing from current efforts to reform the criminal justice system? What kind of topics will this podcast cover? We tackle these questions and more in our first episode. Going forward, we will conduct interviews and delve much deeper into the various issues we touch upon in this first episode. So, stay tuned! -- Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Music & Production: Jared Ware -- Transcript Brian: Hello everybody and welcome to the first episode of Beyond Prisons. I am one of your hosts Brian Sonenstein and I’m joined by my co-host Kim Wilson. How ya doing, Kim? Kim: I’m doing well. Hi Brian, how’s it going? Brian: It’s going alright. I’m excited to be here. I’m glad we’re getting this off the ground. Kim: Yeah, me too. Brian: So what Kim and I are trying to do is something a little bit different. Oh, my dogs are barking in the background. (laughs) Kim: We’re gonna have dogs, we’re gonna have cats. We might have you know, who knows what else is going to show up so I say let’s just roll with it. Brian: I know, it’s fine. Kim and I decided to start this podcast to talk about the issue of prison reform and mass incarceration, and offer some different perspectives than a lot of the things you hear going on in the news right now. So I thought we could introduce ourselves a little bit. Kim, why don’t you go first? Kim: Ok, well, I’ll tell you a little bit about what my motivations were, and I think that will be a nice segway into my intro. But the motivating factor behind me getting on board with this podcast really stems from a place of frustration. I’m frustrated with the policy choices around mass incarceration, around prison specifically, and I’m seeing so many things that are impacting communities that I care about and that many people that I know live in, and I feel like we could be doing something better and so I’m coming at it from that perspective. That said, on a personal level, I’m the mother of two incarcerated men who are serving life in prison without the possibility of parole or at least that was their sentence. My professional and academic interests in incarceration began long before either of them had any encounter with the criminal justice system and I’m thinking of that in a broad sense particularly when we talk about schools and school to prison pipeline, which I’m sure we’re gonna spend quite a bit of time talking about in later episodes. And then I’m also coming at this as an activist who started out very much on board with prison reform and the prison reform movement if you want to call it that, and quickly evolved from that perspective to one of being strongly committed to prison abolition. So that’s a little bit about me, where I’m coming from, and what I’m hoping that this podcast is going to be about. What about you, Brian? Brian: Well, so I am a journalist. I’ve been writing about incarceration and the criminal justice system for about five years now. My work has primarily been to address these issues from the perspective of the people who are most directly impacted by it and that’s how I actually got to know you Kim. I’m also deeply interested in the issue of prison abolition after having been an activist myself for a number of years on a number of issues from drug policy to whistleblowing. I’ve seen a lot of people have interactions with the system and none of them have been good, including friends of mine. I grew up in sort of a blue collar, very small town in New England and saw a lot of people who fell into drugs and other problems, wind up in the system and it just destroyed not only their lives but the lives of their families and friends, and so I just had a growing interest in this. I’m very interested in the topic of reform, I’m also interested in critiquing reform, which is something we talk a lot about here. And we’re also going to try to break away from sort of this large statistical view of incarceration where we’re focusing on numbers. What we’re gonna try to do is bring perspectives from the people who are involved and use those to sort of guide our arguments about what the criminal justice system should be like. So why don’t we talk about like the major narrative around mass incarceration, you know maybe we can start by just critiquing that there. So I don’t know, when you think about mass incarceration , what are some things that jump out to you, like what are the things you know about it? Kim: You know, coming at this from several different points of view and those things have deeply informed where I am today regarding mass incarceration. I think that’s an important thing to talk about because, again, as someone who was trained as a policy analyst, the policy perspective or that school of thought can really be distilled in terms of cost-benefit analysis and I want, as you pointed out, for us to move beyond statistics and to think about the real issues, to dig down deep into the racialized nature of mass incarceration, which is one of the things that jumps out to me. I mean, I think it’s important to address the numbers and to account for those and also to explain what those numbers mean in the context of people’s lives in the context of communities. How do those numbers translate into problems for the people who are behind the numbers, right? So I think that first and foremost addressing the racialized nature of mass incarceration and more broadly what we refer to as the prison industrial complex. That’s one of the main things that I want to talk about and I don’t feel is actually discussed enough in public policy circles. Now, that said, I think that there are public policy institutions that are doing this kind of research and that are publishing reports and white papers and what have you that do address the racialized nature of mass incarceration. But this doesn’t actually seem to make it into the spaces where policy makers are making decisions and that gap right there really frustrates me and it’s something that has frustrated me for a really long time. We know, for example, that Black people are disproportionately represented in the system and what does that mean?  You know, what does that mean in terms of communities? And I want to talk about that and to explore that. We know, for example, that in terms of placing this in a global context that the U.S. has one of the largest prison populations in the world. So what does that mean you know and what does that look like on the ground and what does that mean in the context of the politics of today? Because I don’t think that we can really launch a podcast in 2017 and not talk about the current (laughs) political situation in this country. Brian: Right. Kim: If that’s not a source of frustration for people, I don’t know what is and it’s certainly a major source of frustration for me. Then there is the gender component of mass incarceration. We tend to talk about men who are incarcerated and particularly black men. To neglect an oversight of talking about women and how those numbers have grown exponentially over the last decade and a half, and I think that’s an important piece that needs to be addressed as well. So there’s a lot of stuff that I’m thinking about when I’m thinking about mass incarceration. I think that that this is a good place to start. I’m also thinking about mass incarceration in broader terms and this goes to the title of our podcast as well, Beyond Prisons. I want us to imagine what that means. What does it mean to see something beyond prisons? Can we imagine a world not only without prisons but what are some of the creative solutions that we can come up with through these conversations that are going to be I would say not only realistic but that are necessary in light of the fact that we have, what, over six million people under correctional supervision in this country with about two million of those incarcerated? So when we think about, when I’m thinking about incarceration in this country, I’m thinking about it in really broad terms. I’m thinking of policing. I’m thinking of surveillance. I’m thinking of all the various ways, the mechanisms that are used to control certain populations in this country particularly marginalized groups in this country. What about you? Brian: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that on a very basic level, one of the things that I want to do is talk about what we as Americans by and large think prisons do, who goes there, what happens there, and this includes even through the lens of the reform movement. But as activists, when we’re thinking about policy that we could be implementing and if we’re thinking about what comes next after prison, I think one of the most important things that we can do is have conversations that could lead to a cultural shift among people that will lay a stronger foundation for these policies, and I think we can get there. As we know, prisons and the system in general are largely out of the public view. Attempts to, I know this as a journalist and you know this as both a scholar and a parent, but any attempts to get more information about the system or to question actions by officials, you get the silent treatment or worse. I think in order to really lay the groundwork for a lot of this policy, we need to have conversations and clear some things out about punishment, and about crime, and about safety and the role of prisons in all of this, right? And I think that there is this idea that people are criminals instead of people that do things that are against the law or maybe have low moments. I think there’s this idea that when you go away to prison,  you deserve harsh treatment and certain things as punishment and there’s no thought that these people are eventually going to get out. They’re going to have to reintegrate into society under even more difficult situations than the average person trying to get a job out there today, when you have this scarlet letter of a conviction hanging over you. What I hope that we can do in addition to all the things that you said that I totally agree with. In addition to getting into the various issues that go on in prison, and at the front end and back end, before people go in and after, I just really want to challenge our assumptions, and I want us to really think about the myriad costs that are associated with decisions that we make with punishment. And even on just a basic and theoretical level, we talk about prison sentences, right. We talk about sentencing reform, but we attach arbitrary years on prison sentences because I mean there really is no science behind a lot of this and it’s just interesting to think a lot of times—I hear people on the left and liberals are always talking about how oh, the Republicans are so anti-science. Well, the truth is that as a society, we have this looming system that is very pseudo-scientific and very anti-scientific in a lot of ways. And so these are the ideas and little things that we want to chip away at. We’re gonna bring guests on to talk about these things and a lot of the things that you and I are going to chat about today. We’re gonna gloss over a lot of things, we’re gonna mention a lot of things, but trust that in coming episodes, we will dig into these issues deeper. So, what else? What else should we talk about here? Kim: Yeah, I mean playing off of those points that you just made about prison, one of the things that I’ve been thinking about as I was preparing for this episode today was something that Angela Davis writes about in ‘Are Prisons Obsolete?’  And she says, ‘stop thinking of prisons as inevitable, ‘ right? We think of the prison as this natural thing, and that we can’t imagine life without it. And I think that our name again captures that, but our approach to what we’re attempting to do with these conversations is to think about what is life without a prison. It’s not some Utopian ideal. It’s not politically naïve to talk about a world without prisons, a society without prisons, and the difficulty that I’ve encountered in my work with people, including a lot of liberals. It’s mostly liberals who I’ve been working with around issues of prison abolition, that any time I say, ‘Ok, imagine a world without prisons? What does that society look like?’ The first thing I hear is, no, no, no, you can’t possibly mean you want to get rid of prisons. And again, this really is super, super frustrating because it’s not even... I’m giving you a magic wand. You can make the world whatever you want it to be, right? It’s like, it’s a theoretical exercise in a lot of ways. And people don’t even want to imagine that world. Brian: Why do you think that is? Like why do you think people—I have my own thoughts on this, obviously, but I’m curious of your thoughts on why people are resistant to the idea of having that radical imagination. Kim: Well I think a lot of people are afraid, right. I think that there’s a lot of fear that they watch these television shows, they see things depicted in the media and presented a certain way, and their fantasy about what someone in prison looks like or is capable of is informed by these things. They don’t necessarily—even if they have an experience with someone who’s been to prison, they tend to have this wall up, like okay, I like the idea of improving conditions for people in prison, but what are you talking about? This is going a little too far. You can’t really be talking about getting rid of prisons. And, I’m like actually I am. So institutions where we put people in cages for long periods of time without any consideration as to what that is doing to someone. It’s a problem. It’s problematic. We need to have, I’m fond of saying, the courage, the backbone, like we need strong backs to be able to say this is wrong, right? And how do we disrupt this system? How do we change this system? How can we make something that is different from what we have now, right? Not just substituting and moving this around or you know they say rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, right? You know, just a couple of days ago, de Blasio, Mayor de Blasio of New York, announced that they’re closing down Rikers and that’s great, and I’m cheering for the fact because Rikers was a really shitty place. It was a horrible place by all accounts and it needed to be closed. However, what he’s proposing is setting up new prisons. So for me, and this is where I have to depart with the reform movement: Substitutes for prison, including other prisons, doesn’t really help the issue. It doesn’t address the social, the economic, the political problems that have created the issues that we have regarding mass incarceration, and I think until we get to that, until we get to that point where we can, I mean, good grief, have a conversation about what a world without prisons could look like. And to move people just a tiny little bit to say ‘ok, what does transforming this society mean? How do we deal with really scary things? Okay, so someone’s committed murder or someone’s being raped. These are horrible things and how do we address the victim’s legitimate concerns here while also addressing what is happening in terms of incarceration that we know doesn’t actually act as a deterrent, right? It doesn’t work, so what do we do about this? We need a better way to approach this and I’m thinking of this podcast and our conversations as a way to explore various approaches to what that landscape would look like. I’m looking at it also in terms of how do we challenge white supremacy as part of this project? I see a lot of talk about prisons and carcerality that want to leave out the race component. And that’s one of the hang-ups I think that we have and that we confront, particularly in the terms of policy making and policy choices that are being made because these policies around prison are meant to appear race neutral, and they’re not. We need to have not only a language but a process by which we can assess, analyze, and understand what racialized carceral system is, and what do we do about that. Brian: I agree. I completely agree. And I think that there is a lot of danger in compartmentalizing reform efforts instead of taking these broader approaches like abolition. My head is spinning. There’s so many things I want to say in response to what you just said. I mean one thing I want to say is that I think that for people who don’t really know what prison abolition is, they’ve never heard of it, or maybe they have somewhat of an idea. I think that one of the helpful ways to think about this too is that there is not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution to prisons, much the same way that much the one-size-fits-all of prisons doesn’t work for the justice system. I think when we’re talking about getting rid of prisons, like you said, we’re not talking about replacing it with a different kind of prison. I really resent a lot of this talk about looking over to Sweden and see how awesome it is to be a prisoner in Sweden. I think that’s totally the wrong way to look at prisons. It’s also a hard conversation, I think, and I wonder if you ever butt up against this, Kim. The needs and the problems are so bad for people who are incarcerated that the needs are very immediate, right? So I’m not sitting here saying we shouldn’t support these reform efforts that look to increase the quality of life of prisoners, because we need to help people right now. But we can’t do that at the expense of a broader vision. I see a lot in these reform efforts of reducing or showing greater leniency toward low level non-violent offenders, but at the same time, we are going to increase penalties and introduce new penalties for violent offenders or for other drug crimes. They talked about introducing a new Fentanyl mandatory minimum sentence in the last criminal justice reform bill. It probably will be added to this one, I assume, with Republicans being in control of legislature. Another thing that I want to say and I’m jumping around a little bit here, but I’m just thinking about your comments, is a lot of times what we see in reform is euphemism, to make it look like things are changing or to modestly or slightly tweak a prisoner’s experience. But the abuse and the fundamental issue of why a certain thing in prison is bad remains the same. So, for example, with solitary confinement, we say that solitary confinement is torture and I think that it is pretty widely accepted now that solitary confinement is torture. And at the same time, the reforms that we get are two extra hours out of your cell per week, and reformers call that a victory. Or only certain groups of people are not allowed to go into solitary confinement, or they opened a new housing unit that is basically solitary confinement in everything but name. So it’s really tricky and that’s another reason why I think it’s important to consider abolition and to take it seriously because a lot of these problems. We are at where we are today because a lot of these politicians have been kicking the can on these issues ever since we had prisons. I mean, Attica, the reform efforts followed Attica. Rebellions have been going on for years and years and years. Things haven’t gotten materially better. I think when we think about abolition, another thing to think about like you were saying, is how do we think about somebody who’s committed an act of murder, an act of rape? How do we think about justice? But it’s also that the prison and the system that we have set up does nothing to sort of head off these things from happening by changing the material conditions and environments, social contexts and racial contexts like you were talking about, that people live in, that limit their options and push them in or silo their paths in life. So it’s not just what can we do differently when someone commits a crime but it’s like how can we invest in communities. All the money we spend on federal, state, and local jails, all that money could be so much better put to use with education, jobs, healthcare in society in ways that would reduce the number of people winding up behind bars. Kim: Absolutely! And I think to your first point regarding reforms and changing things in the immediate and looking to European models of prisons and what not. I think that there is a space for having a comparative analysis as to what other countries are doing that are better than what is happening here in the U.S. and if it improves the conditions of people on the inside, then Ok, great. However, what an abolitionist’s perspective actually does is that it provides a framework for understanding and placing that conditions have to be improved right now, however, the long term goal is not to just sit back and say, yeah, we improved conditions, but how do we not use prisons as an anchor for the problems that are happening in society? How do we or what other things can we use? And you mentioned some of those things: investing in communities, providing healthcare, mental health. Mental health is such a big part of this problem, not criminalizing drugs and seeing that these things don’t actually improve safety or security, but are used as the pretext for increasing the carceral state. I think that one of the things that we’re going to do in upcoming episodes is really delve into what do we mean by prison abolition. Today, I think that we can just give a quick definition of that, a working definition so people have that and to talk a little bit about what we mean when we say prison industrial complex so that we understand the language that’s being used here. Because I think particularly in this day and age, particularly in this political climate that our words matter and our words matter more than they have in the past. So providing clear definitions gives us a place to begin. It may not improve or increase understanding very much, but at least it gives us a place to begin so that we know that we’re talking about this thing over here, and not that thing over there. That said, one of the things I talk about when I talk about prison abolition and again using a lot of Angela Davis’ work, using the work of people from Critical Resistance, as well as Insight, and a number of other groups is to really think about it as a political vision. To think about how prison abolition constitutes a set of long term goals. There are things that we are doing right now, however, the goal is to eliminate and get rid of imprisonment, to get rid of policing and surveillance as the mechanisms that we use to address social problems. I think that’s really the most concrete way of putting it in really simple terms. It sounds easy but once we start unpacking that, I think there is just so much happening in that. So that framework include, for me at least, that framework of abolition is also anti-racist. It is when we talk about gender disparities. We’re including trans’ rights. We’re talking about immigration policy. We’re talking about all of these things that are happening right now and the kinds of policies that are being implemented by this administration that work against an abolitionist framework. I feel a sense of urgency now more than I have I think before. And I think I’ve had a sense of urgency for a long time. I don’t know. What do you think about that? Brian: I totally agree, and I think that we really need to have goals. And I think a lot of what’s happening in the prison reform movement and even just sort of larger on the left, I think you see that it’s a little different when you talk about when you talk about something like single-payer healthcare, for instance. I think we need to have these goals that even if they seem politically unfeasible in this moment, we have to have something to work toward. Like you said, provide a framework for what we’re doing, not only so that we don’t shut off any avenues to fully realize reform or anything like that, but just so that we’re going somewhere with this. This is the work of movements. You know, we might not see this in our lifetime. A lot of people that I talk to about abolition for their first time kind of scoff at you. They’re like, yeah right, there’s no way that would ever happen. The prison is such a fundamental institution in our society that obviously it’s much bigger than any one issue. I think that something that you were touching on or something that it made me think about when you were talking is that if you bring an abolitionist framework to this, it does inform the way you look at other policies and other areas of government and society instead of just sort of being content to fiddle with whatever problems are going on. It makes you want to investigate the root causes more, to question the system more. It also sort of gives you more empathy in a way. I feel like even the worst political foes that I could imagine, I definitely would like to understand more about why they are the way they are. That doesn’t mean I’d excuse their behavior, but just sort of a strategy. I feel so much that political fighting and everything today is like very in the moment and lacks a broader context. So, anyway, I think abolition is something that if there were ever a good time to talk about it, it would be now with things as awful as they are. I feel like we almost have more space to talk about abolition than we might have had a few years ago. Kim: Absolutely! Absolutely! Yeah, I think that one of the things that I wrote down in my notes in my preparation for today had to do with reforms, and one of the things that Angela Davis says is that the idea of reforms doesn’t go beyond the prison. So if all of your solutions begin and end with prisons, then there is really no room for alternatives in that reform model, and that’s the problem that I have as an abolitionist with the reform movement – that all of the solutions maintain these carceral institutions, so whether we’re talking about house arrest or surveillance, parole, probations, what have you, then it’s not really an alternative. You’re trying to give something a different look without doing much about the actual problem and this resonates with people. This is very appealing and again, this is extremely frustrating for me because again, as someone who was trained in policy and public policy research and what have you, the literature really approaches mass incarceration from those perspectives. So when we’re writing policy documents, when they’re doing evaluations of re-entry programs, for example, there are really no alternatives that are being presented that are not carceral alternatives. And that, for me, has been part of the problem for years. That, for me, the ‘Aha’ moment or the lead-up to the ‘Aha’ moment if we can even call it that, came a number of years ago, where it was evident that the further I dug down into re-entry and what was happening in communities was people returning from prison to certain communities. There’s a pattern there and that pattern is repeated over, over and over again across communities in this country. So the policies weren’t working. But it wasn’t enough to just say the policies aren’t working. What is actually happening here? What is informing these policies, and I think that was where I really started to go into the abolitionist literature because the public policy literature doesn’t discuss abolition. It completely neglects it. Abolition is something that, if you’re a political theorist that was talking about abolition from that perspective, and people are writing brilliant things about Foucault and what have you. But that information, that knowledge doesn’t transfer over to the public policy space. So how do we bring these things together? It’s not just political theorists, but philosophers and other people who are doing work on prison abolition, not just theoretical but practical work as well. How do we bring that knowledge to bear on policy choices so that in the choosing because people talk about public policy in sort of a disconnected way in this thing that’s happening somewhere in Washington and in the halls of the State Capitals and what have you, it’s some kind of mysterious process. No. People are making decisions, and those decisions are informed by people’s values, people’s understanding of the problem, etc., etc. And if we’re not attempting to understand that part of it in terms of what’s happening with so many people and disproportionately, black and brown people in this country going to prison, then we’re actually not being honest about trying to address what is happening here. What we’re doing is something else, but it’s not rooted in an honest, intellectual project that is going to give us public policies that improve the conditions for communities and the people that live in those communities. I think that, for me, that’s one of the strengths of an abolitionist’s perspective, and one of the things in my activism and in my scholarship and in my personal life that I have really committed to understanding in a lot of different ways. And I think that it presents a lot of challenges. It’s a difficult task to be an abolitionist. It’s not an easy thing to say that publicly and it’s even more difficult thing if you write about these issues, or facilitating workshops and conversations with people around these things. They always want to talk down to you and tell you that you’re misinformed somehow and that letting people out of prison is just going to run society. I’m like, have you read the paper? I mean, have you looked around? Angela Davis says this all the time: not having any prisons would actually improve things. No alternative would be better than having prisons and that really gets people’s backs up. They can’t handle that. I think to your point earlier about trying to understand where people are coming from with that, I think that’s an important piece of the overall puzzle in conversation here, and I’m looking forward to these conversations as the podcast unfolds and as we get deeper into these things. Brian: Yeah, and I just think one last thing I’ll say on your discussion of policy-making and peoples’, like you were saying, sort of arching their back and a lot of this stuff. I think it speaks to a lot of political incentives that end up shaping reform and that need to change, and hopefully conversations like the ones we’re going to have on this podcast can help change. Because it’s really hard, you have to admit on a certain level that it’s hard for policymakers to go out and maybe put out a reform that would reduce the number of violent offenders in prison because all it takes is one violent offender to make the news to cause a political backlash to that. I think because of that the incentives are so stacked to be harsher, whereas the political gain for showing leniency is so unfortunately low, and I think we need to completely invert that and sort of show politicians and these political figures, including prosecutors. To a certain degree, they’re followers. They’re going to take certain cues from the public in terms of what the public will support and what the public won’t support. So I do see the tide changing a little bit in terms of how people view ‘offenders.’ Obviously, it’s like a very niche group of offenders are given leniency right now, but it’s hopeful in the sense that it could–if we could have these conversations to get people to think differently, we could change those political incentives so that there is less of a risk for a politician to craft a policy or sign on to a policy that would decarcerate and that politicians won’t so strongly overreact to rises in crime and the public doesn’t prioritize the safety of some communities at the expense of others. Kim: Absolutely! And I think that this whole thing about who we let out of prison, and what is an acceptable kind of level of criminality–if we’re aiming for zero crime in society, we’re neglecting the fact that we’re dealing with human beings. So we need to talk about that. We need to address that on the front end and I don’t see where politicians do this very effectively, and I’m sure we’ll certainly critique the politician’s approach to public policy around incarceration and what have you. But we don’t have a world where we will be crime free. That world actually doesn’t exist. So a world without prisons is possible; a world without crime I’m not so sure. So I think that, how would we handle that crime? What constitutes a crime? So we have all sorts of examples currently in the news: defending yourself against a domestic abuser is considered a crime. So that’s a problem. What do we want to do with that? I mean, what we’re really saying to victims of violence is well we don’t care about you if you tried to defend yourself, then you are really the problem. How has that changed anything for that community, for that person, for their family or anything like that? So I think we need to move beyond the surface level analysis that is really popular and talk about the complexities involved with letting people, not just opening the doors and letting people run out of prison. We’re talking about a more thoughtful approach to decarceration, getting rid of cages. We’re talking about, as you mentioned earlier, providing people with healthcare and for me, particularly mental health, and what that would do. We know that there is a large proportion of the incarcerated population that has a documented mental illness. That’s a problem. And if our approach to these issues is basically to just lock them up for some indefinite amount of time, don’t provide them with any kind of counseling or support while they’re incarcerated, that somehow through the isolation and solitary monastic existence that these people are going to have some kind of ‘Aha’ moment, and magically come out being okay. Brian: That’s what I mean. Yeah, when I was saying earlier that I just feel like incarceration is so anti-science. I mean listening to the way you just described it, it sounds ridiculous! And we have at this point mountains of evidence showing how incarceration harms, and I would argue that we have very little evidence suggesting that incarceration as an end in itself works to do anything other than perpetuate misery. So, yeah, sorry I just wanted to chime in here. Kim: No, Absolutely! Brian: Because it always baffles me that we cling to this institution so strongly, but it’s complete pseudo-science the more that you dig into it. Kim:  Uh-huh, Absolutely! Absolutely! And I think that’s a valid point and that we need to talk about that more not just on here, but in the context of public policy choices that are being made. Targeting specific groups of people or to put people in prison who have drug problems makes no sense. It makes absolutely no sense. You don’t actually change the conditions for that individual by putting them in prison. Not just putting them in prison, but putting them in a cage and not giving them any kind of assistance. These things don’t happen, like they don’t just fall out of the sky and all of a sudden they walk out of prison and they’re going to magically never use again. And that seems to be the sort of approach towards carcerality here, why reforms are a huge problem because it relies on this notion that if you lock someone up and you take away everything that is meaningful to them, that is of value to them, their ties to the community no matter how strained those are, their ties to their family no matter how difficult that family might be, those are still ties that we are basically cutting off and say, Ok, we’re going to remove you from society, from everything that is near and dear to you, and now we’re expecting you to be ok. So when you come out, you should be ready to conquer the world. And then we set up this system of obstacles for a person who’s returning from prison and into the community, and we say, well you need to follow all these rules. Okay, so you go to prison from a community where most of the people that you know have also gone to prison, but we have laws in this country that prevent the association of people with a felony conviction from associating, so that can get you back into prison. That’s just so ridiculous! Who else would you know? It’s like if your parent went to prison and you’re their child and you also went to prison, we’re basically saying, well mom, dad, aunt, uncle, cousin, whatever the ties are, you can’t be around each other. So now we’re undermining the support system that would be there by making the association a criminal act. It’s like, God! How is this supposed to work? Brian:  Yeah, and I think one of the things that we all are going to need to talk about, and it’s going to be hard given just American culture in general, are these limits of individual responsibility. I think, as you were talking about earlier, that a lot of the way carcerality bleeds in, and the punitive structure bleeds into post-release and things like that, and you were talking about drug treatment programs and things like that. You know, even in that situation- let’s take drug treatment programs for instance. A lot of these programs are 12-step programs that are built around the individual basically accepting full responsibility for their actions, making no excuses outside of themselves, and supposedly being able to stay sober with that as their backing. And the truth of it is that there are limits to personal responsibility for somebody like that. I mean, if you live in a context in which drugs are always around, or maybe you have a chronic health issue and that’s how you became addicted to opiods. I mean, taking responsibility like that is just another, it’s like another one of these examples of sort of puritanical anti-science approach. It’s like disproved by incredible amounts of evidence. But we’re going to need to really as Americans dial back our desire to pin 100% total responsibility on people who commit crimes. And I just want to…I think this is a good time to talk about in terms of abolition too, Kim and I’m wondering what your thoughts are on this. When we talk about prison abolition and you said this earlier in a way, we’re not just talking about letting people out of prison. We need to… there still will be accountability after prison, right. There still will be justice. And hopefully, it won’t look like this. So, yeah, I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that. Kim: Yeah, I mean we need to talk about and explore new forms of justice. So the whole theatre that’s associated when someone gets sentenced to a long prison term is one of the problems. I obviously experienced that with my sons and this idea that somehow justice was being served within that context felt so…it’s painful and it’s still painful today. To think back on this and part of what that does is it creates further divisions within communities because we’re all in this together. We’re all in this together, and like you said, the American ethos of individual responsibility and resiliency and this kind of ‘you can do it, and I built it myself…and I didn’t need any help, and it’s not my responsibility to take care of you, etc., etc.,’ which is at the core of American society. People really really believe that, uncritically believe that. They don’t examine what they say around resiliency and individual responsibility at all, and we have medical models that are informed by this perspective. A lot of this probation and parole are informed by this perspective. A lot of re-entry programs are based on these perspectives, and the need to rely on personal transformation strategies as the preferred approach to dealing with crime and to dealing with people’s problems. Because I think we conflate that. We make people their problems. We don’t separate the two. We don’t say, Ok this person has a problem…we say, these people are a problem. So drug users are a problem, not wait a minute, let’s think about what is actually happening here. And as you pointed out, we’re living in a really un-scientific time. The lack of critical thinking around these things or the willingness to approach this from a scientifically informed perspective is another huge issue that we’re probably going to talk about in one way or another throughout every conversation that we have because it’s there. It’s part of every single issue, and to lay blame at an individual’s feet is…one of the things that I say quite a bit is that when we individualize, we moralize. It makes it really easy to moralize. We do a lot of finger wagging and we can say, oh you need to get your act together, you need to stop doing drugs, you need to stop doing this, and we’re very much invested in this notion of choice; that an individual chose this path as opposed to this other path. And when we do that, what we’re doing is obscuring the fact that there are conditions and that there is a system in place that perpetuates these conditions that can strain your choices. So if you can’t eat because you don’t have a job and because you can’t go to your mama’s house because of whatever reason or because there are federal policies that prevent you from crashing on her couch because she lives in HUD housing or something ridiculous like that. And you’re back on the street. I mean, what would you do? Because I think about that quite often and I would do whatever I need to do to eat. I would do whatever I needed to do to survive, and I live in L.A. I have been in supermarkets out here where I’ve seen people arrested who are hungry. They’re coming in and they’re stealing a loaf of bread or something small like that, and the police are called because that is the system that we have. Instead of the manager just giving them the damn loaf of bread and keeping it moving, it’s like…No, we have to call the police. Now you have another set of problems there. I think that part of our…part of what I’m hoping we’ll do is to unpack that a little bit more in a more critical way, and bring people on as guests who can discuss these issues in a really well informed way to get us to think about this stuff beyond the superficial, beyond this sort of knee-jerk reaction to petty crime. But, that said, I also feel that we need to talk about violent crime, and that without the conversation or a set of conversations about violent criminals that we would be doing a disservice to what we’re saying we want to do with this podcast. I think that we need to address what happens when the unthinkable happens, and how do we deal with that and how do we address that? How can communities come together and what does a justice model look like that says, ok, well we need to talk about that more… We need to address the fears that people have and discuss ways that someone who has committed a really horrific crime can be held accountable. It doesn’t produce more harm. It doesn’t perpetuate the pain that already exists because I don’t think, in speaking from my own experience…the pain doesn’t go away. The pain when something horrible happens in your family with crime …that pain doesn’t leave. It doesn’t get better with time. It is just as fresh today as it was the day that it happened, and I think that is something that for me, on a personal level, that I want to talk about more and to bring in families that have been impacted in these ways by crime on both sides. I think that’s an important conversation to have, and something that in transformative justice circles and restorative justice circles has been happening for a lot of years, and there are ways to approach those conversations. But we can’t do that until we talk about accountability. But if accountability is happening in very narrow terms of ‘lock them up and throw away the key’, that doesn’t cohere with an abolitionist perspective, and as you can see, there is a lot to talk about. Brian: There is. Kim: There is no shortage of topics here. I think we barely scratched the surface today. I’m excited about what we can do with this podcast. I don’t know. Do you have any additional thoughts? Brian: There’s just one more thing that I wanted to bring up, and I am curious what you think about this, too. I think a lot of times when people bring up these arguments somebody might say to you, Well, Kim, what about the victims? What about the people who the crimes are perpetrated against? Don’t you think that deserve our empathy too? I don’t know what you would say. I would say our system is not designed at all right now to really empower victims in any meaningful way outside of punishment. I think prosecutors by and large aren’t really interested in what a victim would like to do. I wrote about earlier this year that the vast majority of crime victims, including violent crime victims would prefer rehabilitation over incarceration. There’s a lot of myths that, I would also say that maybe people wouldn’t be victims if we didn’t have incarceration and were addressing these root causes. That was really the last thing that I want to bring up. I’m just thinking about some of the things that might come to your mind when you’re thinking about prison abolition for the first time, sort of these ingrained defenses that we have as Americans against imagining a world without prisons. Like you said, a lot of this, we will be digging in very deeply on all these subjects with guests, and I’m very, very excited. So, yeah, we want to know what questions you have. You can email me at brian@shadowproof.com. We would be happy to take tips from people and hear how people react to the show and a lot of ideas that we have. Honestly, I want to hear what sort of problems people have with a lot of these ideas because I think that a lot of these conversations are going to be really uncomfortable for a lot of people. They’re gonna be really difficult. We’re going to be talking about violence, and sexual offenses and things like this that we react to in a certain way. But we need to have these conversations if we’re really going to make a meaningful impact on this issue. What about you, Kim? Do you have any final thoughts? Kim: Yeah, I think that there are a number of victims groups around the country that have been very outspoken against things like the death penalty, and I’ve been working with some groups, some people in Delaware around this as well, whose families have been the victims of violent crimes. And it’s a difficult conversation, but I can tell you that from my own experience, talking with these families, they have been out front of the death penalty abolition movement, and they have said things not in their name, like you can’t kill someone because you lost someone in their name. And this notion of state sanctioned violence as a way to mete out justice is deeply problematic for a lot of people, not just on a moral level because they do think that it’s wrong, but in terms of what this actually does. What does this actually do? It doesn’t feel good, but then again, I think that the people who are best able to talk about this issue are the victims. I don’t want to speak for anyone. If anything, another goal that I have for this podcast is really to amplify and marginalize people’s voices, and to let people speak for themselves rather than talking over them or for them. You’ll hear me say a lot, I’m speaking for myself, because I think that needs to be clear that I’m not talking for other folks here. I think that in general, I look forward to hearing what people have to say. I think that these are courageous conversations that we need to have, that they’re going to require us to have really strong backs to address. We’ll certainly give people trigger warnings around certain issues. There might be a trigger warning around the entire podcast. I mean, I don’t even know. That includes just as much for my own benefit as for anybody else’s because this isn’t easy. I’m on board with this project because it gives me a way to sort of channel this energy that I have and to bring this work to a much bigger audience, and to include a lot more people in this conversation. Before I forget, if people want to contact me, I’m at wilsonk68@gmail.com and I look forward to hearing about what people have to say and if they want to chime in, and if they want to have ideas for future topics. Certainly, I’m open to these things. Hate mail you can send somewhere else. I’m not interested in the hate mail and the abusive nonsense that I’m sure we’re going to get as a result of putting ourselves out there on these issues. It’s been, this has been great. I enjoyed this conversation. I think it was a lot easier than I thought, huh. Brian: Yeah, I know seriously. I’m really glad to be doing this with you Kim so thank you very much and thank you everybody for listening. We will have another episode out soon. You can subscribe to us on Itunes Beyond Prisons and stay tuned for our next episode. Thank you so much.

Shadowproof journalist Brian Sonenstein interviews Mary Buser, author of Lockdown On Rikers. The two discuss mental health and solitary confinement in one of the nation's most notorious jail complexes.