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Alex and Lisa talk to George Wilkerson, an award-winning writer, artist and poet currently incarcerated on North Carolina’s Death Row. In 2018 he won a PEN award for his essay Limp Grey Fur, was a finalist for the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest, and won a Gold Award in the “Capitalizing on Justice” Art Competition. In addition to being editor for Compassion, a newsletter for people on Death Row, his work has appeared in multiple philanthropic platforms and exhibitions, including Hidden Voices, The Upper Room, The Marshall Project, Windows on Death Row, the Corrections Accountability Project, and LifeLines Collective. In 2019 he was a finalist for an Ellie award. We would like to thank Tessie Castillo for introducing us to George and for making the recording of this podcast episode possible. Tessie Castillo is an author from Durham, North Carolina. She co-wrote her first book, Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row, with four men on Death Row, whom she met while volunteering in North Carolina’s Central Prison in 2014. As an international journalist, Castillo also writes articles from around the world that explore criminal justice, drug policy, and racial equity. She previously worked as a harm reduction advocate in North Carolina and played a central role in legalizing syringe exchange programs and expanding access to overdose prevention medication in the state. Find out more about Tessie and George on Tessie’s website www.tessiecastillo.com You can buy the book here: https://www.blackrosewriting.com/biographymemoir/crimsonletters or on Amazon (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1684334446 and Amazon(UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crimson-Letters-Voices-Death-Row-ebook/dp/B085TPSK3S/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=crimson+letters&qid=1587677364&sr=8-1 Click on the following link to find out more of what we are up to, you can sign up to our newsletter, join our Facebook group and subscribe to our YouTube channel - linktr.ee/soberexperiment
Hosts Nik & Anna discuss privatization and mass incarceration - we will be airing interviews with Bianca Tylek from the Corrections Accountability Project at the Urban Justice Center in NYC and Nico Amador at ACLU-Vermont. We cover Vermonters move to a CoreCivic privately owned prison in Mississippi that happened early October, prison slave labor, the criminalization of the poor, and divestment.
Josh talks with Bianca Tylek and Michael Crowley about prison privatization and private prisons I forgot to mention that Decarceration Nation was mentioned in the online publication Bustle this week. Thanks to Taylor Maples for including us on the list of "7 Criminal Justice Podcasts to Listen to." If you are a long-time fan of Orange Is the New Black, the guide to all of my recaps covers every season to date. If you are just starting to watch Orange Is the New Black, the first recap covers the first episode of Season 6 from the perspective of formerly incarcerated folks. Bianca Tylek is the Director of the Corrections Accountability Project. Michael Crowley worked at the Office of Management budget under both the Bush and Obama Administrations, he currently works at the Brennan Center for Justice. He was written recent articles on funding priorities for criminal justice reform and about model state movements towards criminal justice reform. I asked the most renowned expert in prison abolition that I know the question, "if you could only suggest one book people should read if they wanted to learn more about abolition, what would you suggest?" She quickly responded, "Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Y Davis." I have also recently written a breakdown of my own experiences in Solitary Confinement. Private Prisons are seeing incredible growth in immigration enforcement contracts. Private Prisons are often shielded from FOIA requests. Privatization of public prisons should be an equally large concern as Bianca's research at the Correction Accountability Project has proven. The University of Pennsylvania produced a pretty good study summarizing the problems with medical contracts in prisons. Securus has moved to acquire ICS which will create a near duopoly on telephone communication in the correctional market. New York City just made many phone calls in jail free. Many of the companies who operate in the private prison and prison privatization space are buying up community correction and reentry services to take advantage of the movement towards criminal justice reform. Carl Takei's article addresses the move by private companies into mass supervision and surveillance. Obviously, I disagree with Michael on the First Step Act but I do agree that one of the risks of the legislation is that it widens the net of supervision and surveillance. Meek Mill is a textbook case in how expanded surveillance and supervision can be dangerous. I have covered the evidence behind the question of violence many times, here on the podcast, on Medium, on Medium again, and on Daily Kos. The breakdowns of prison costs were broken down in a Vera Institute of Justice study "The Price of Prisons."
Voir Dire: Conversations from the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School
A small group of men at Sing Sing Correctional Facility fundraised nearly $8,000 from other men in the facility for a gun buyback. Bianca Tylek, founder of the Corrections Accountability Project, tells us about her involvement with the project and discusses rehabilitation and the Second Amendment for communities of color.
Voir Dire: Conversations from the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School
Have you ever thought about what it means to make money off of caging other people? You should. Vanguard owns 19% of Core Civic, a company with $1.7 billion in revenue that owns, manages, and operates private prisons and detention centers. So millions of Americans are unknowingly invested in Core Civic through Vanguard’s extremely popular retirement accounts and mutual fund products. But private prison companies are only the tip of a much larger iceberg. Prisons and prison services are being commercialized at alarming rates. Bianca Tylek, our guest this week & the Founder of the Corrections Accountability Project, invites us not only to decide how we want our money to be invested, but more importantly to ask whether or not we’re ok with some people profiting off of the caging of others.