Kite Line

This week, we air an interview with WFYI reporters Lauren Bavis and Jake Harper in Indianapolis. They co-host the podcast called Sick, the second season of which focuses on health care issues in the Indiana Women’s Prison. As they share on the show, the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic ignited their interest in IWP and and led them to research how health care was being managed in the facility. As they developed their communication with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, however, much more came up beyond COVID-19.

Content warning for discussion of suicide and assault.

Lauren mentioned that she listened to a lot of Kite Line as research for this season of their show. Here are some of our previous episodes about the Indiana Women’s Prison:

21 | Pregnancy in Prison

23 | Childbirth in Prison

168 | Writing Our Histories: A Conversation with Anastazia Schmid, Part Three

79 | The Past Isn’t Passed: Cycles of Violence and Exploitation

54 | Prisoner Perspectives on Collateral Damage

Thank you, to Jake and Lauren for speaking with us. You can find out more about their podcast on their website, sickpodcast.org

The explosive spread of the Omicron variant has brought our focus back to the COVID-vulnerability the prison system imposes on its captives. This week, we speak to two people — one outside and one inside the walls — dealing with the effects of COVID on California prisoners.. We start off with an interview with Olivia Campbell, an advocate for prisoners based in Sacramento who has appeared on Kite Line before. For background, she paints a troubling picture of systematic medical neglect since the beginning of the pandemic, including disturbing treatment of disabled and elderly prisoners in the two state medical prisons. Her focus this week, however, is on the state’s violation of vaccination orders, allowing guards to evade basic safety measures and threaten the health of vulnerable prisoners in California Medical Facility and California Health Care Facility.

After Olivia, we hear from Mwalimu Shakur, who updates us on conditions in Corcoran, the California institution where he is held. He shares that unfortunately, COVID-safety failures extend beyond the state medical facilities. In Corcoran, guards are also refusing vaccination and using the crisis as leverage against both prisoners and the administrators. While prisoner and solidarity protests spread across North America when the first wave of COVID hit, there is now a surprising acceptance — especially on the outside — of prisoners suffering sickness and death as Omicron tears through the prisons.

This week, we honor the late Russell Maroon Shoatz. On December 17th, Russell Maroon Shoatz passed away. In 1970, Shoatz was convicted for the murder of a police officer in Pennsylvania and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. On February 20, 2014, Shoatz was returned to the prison’s general population after being held in solitary confinement for 22 consecutive years. Shoatz was granted compassionate release on October 26, 2021, while suffering from a terminal illness.

We share part of an interview with Shoatz, recorded on August 15th 1996, at State Correctional Institution-Greene in Pennsylvania.  The interview was originally aired on the Peoples Video Network, and was conducted by Dhoruba Bin Wahad.

In breaking news, Shaka Shakur was severely beaten during a transfer from the Green Rock Correctional Center to the River North Correctional Center, both in Virginia. Shakur, a longtime Indiana prison rebel, was punitively moved to Virginia in 2019. Another prisoner reported this week’s beating, and passed along that Shakur has been denied medical care, with the exception of a tetanus shot and a shower.

As mentioned in our episode, the call-in information to aid Shaka Shakur is here:

Urgent-Action-Alert–Defend-Shaka-Shakur’s-Life

This week, Mwalimu Shakur calls us from inside Corcoran prison in California to share his experiences in the Secure Housing Unit. He’s been on the show before, talking about the gladiator fights used by guards to punish and control the imprisoned population. Housed in Corcoran for decades, he describes how he kept going under such extreme isolation.  We will have links to our previous episodes with Mwalimu on our website.

Last week, on December 17th, Russell Maroon Shoatz passed away. In 1970, Shoatz was convicted for the murder of a police officer in Pennsylvania and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. On February 20, 2014, Shoatz was returned to the prison’s general population after being held in solitary confinement for over 22 consecutive years. Shoatz was granted compassionate release on October 26, 2021, while suffering from a terminal illness.

Today, we share part of an interview with Shoatz, recorded on August 15th 1996, at State Correctional Institution-Greene in Pennsylvania.  The interview was originally aired on the Peoples Video Network, and was conducted by Dhoruba Bin Wahad.

We are sad to report that Russell Maroon Shoatz, who was recently granted compassionate release after his decades in prison, has passed away.

This week, we return to the final part of our conversation about carceral non-profits with Zhandarka Kurti and Jarrod Shanahan. Kurti is a professor of criminology and Criminal Justice at Loyola University Chicago, and Jarrod Shanahan is a professor of criminal justice at Governors State University in Chicago.

Bella Bravo interviews Zhana and Jarrod, who are abolitionist scholars researching incarceration, and in recent years, their work has turned to the reconfiguration of the U.S. penal system as movements successfully delegitimate mass incarceration. They write that “Today we find ourselves in a unique moment of the penal crisis. Fear of crime does not register on a national level as it has in the past, at the exact moment the historic injustices of mass incarceration have become a matter of popular anger and disgust.” For example, “the conquest and burning of Minneapolis’s Third Precinct in response to the police murder of George Floyd was a profound act of abolition which established the political terrain on which the George Floyd Rebellion has unfolded since.”

But they warn that “this growing chorus to end mass incarceration consists not only of abolitionists but also liberals and some on the right. This conversation addresses the carceral non-profits who steer radical change towards liberal reform and the promotion of carceral expansion under the guise of decarceration.

These are not the small non-profits adjacent to the criminal justice system that assist prisoners and their families meet basic needs. Carceral nonprofits may support various reentry programs for incarcerated people, conduct research about the criminal justice system, advocate for and fund various policy changes, and lastly in moments of crisis emerge as powerful advocates for the carceral status quo. Carceral nonprofits are lobbyists and foundations like the Ford Foundation, state contractors redesigning jails, like the group Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, and even major private investors like Arnold Ventures.

“For abolitionists, campaigns for decarceration — or the reduction of the prison population — is an important first step in a vision that seeks to do away with the social ills the present criminal justice system simply manages.”

Our earlier episode on this topic with them can be found here.

This conversation builds on the previous Kite Line episodes:

-Our previous episodes with Zhana and Jarrod are here and here.

-Our previous episodes with Maya Schenwar & Victoria Law, who wrote Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms are here and here

-Our shows with Kelly Grace Price with Close Rosie’s are here and here

-Our episodes with Judah Schept and Micol Seigel on jail expansion and their experiences with Decarcerate Monroe County are here, here and here.

If you would like to read more on this topic after the interview, Zhana and Jarrod’s related articles are “Rebranding Mass Incarceration: The Lippman Commission and Carceral Devolution in New York City,” which appeared in Social Justice in 2018, “Managing Urban Disorder In The 1960s: The New York City Model” on the Gotham Center for New York History’s blog in 2020, and “Carceral Non-Profits and the Limits of Prison Reform,” which is forthcoming from ACME: An international Journal of Critical Geographies. Their book States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform and the Future of America’s Punishment System is forthcoming from Reaction Books.

This week, we cover carceral non-profits in an interview with Drs. Zhandarka Kurti, a professor of criminology and Criminal Justice at Loyola University Chicago, and Jarrod Shanahan, professor of criminal justice at Governors State University in Chicago.

Bella Bravo interviews Zhana and Jarrod, who are abolitionist scholars researching incarceration, and in recent years, their work has turned to the reconfiguration of the U.S. penal system as movements successfully delegitimate mass incarceration. They write that “Today we find ourselves in a unique moment of the penal crisis. Fear of crime does not register on a national level as it has in the past, at the exact moment the historic injustices of mass incarceration have become a matter of popular anger and disgust.” For example, “the conquest and burning of Minneapolis’s Third Precinct in response to the police murder of George Floyd was a profound act of abolition which established the political terrain on which the George Floyd Rebellion has unfolded since.”

But they warn that “this growing chorus to end mass incarceration consists not only of abolitionists but also liberals and some on the right. This conversation addresses the carceral non-profits who steer radical change towards liberal reform and the promotion of carceral expansion under the guise of decarceration.

These are not the small non-profits adjacent to the criminal justice system that assist prisoners and their families meet basic needs. Carceral nonprofits may support various reentry programs for incarcerated people, conduct research about the criminal justice system, advocate for and fund various policy changes, and lastly in moments of crisis emerge as powerful advocates for the carceral status quo. Carceral nonprofits are lobbyists and foundations like the Ford Foundation, state contractors redesigning jails, like the group Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, and even major private investors like Arnold Ventures. Foundations, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore puts it– are “twice-stolen wealth”.

“For abolitionists, campaigns for decarceration — or the reduction of the prison population — is an important first step in a vision that seeks to do away with the social ills the present criminal justice system simply manages.”

We will air the rest of their conversation next week.

This conversation builds on the previous Kite Line episodes:

-Our previous episodes with Zhana and Jarrod are here and here.

-Our previous episodes with Maya Schenwar & Victoria Law, who wrote Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms are here and here

-Our shows with Kelly Grace Price with Close Rosie’s are here and here

-Our episodes with Judah Schept and Micol Seigel on jail expansion and their experiences with Decarcerate Monroe County are here, here and here.

If you would like to read more on this topic after the interview, Zhana and Jarrod’s related articles are “Rebranding Mass Incarceration: The Lippman Commission and Carceral Devolution in New York City,” which appeared in Social Justice in 2018, “Managing Urban Disorder In The 1960s: The New York City Model” on the Gotham Center for New York History’s blog in 2020, and “Carceral Non-Profits and the Limits of Prison Reform,” which is forthcoming from ACME: An international Journal of Critical Geographies. Their book States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform and the Future of America’s Punishment System is forthcoming from Reaction Books.

You can also check out the new podcast Campu, about Japanese American incarceration here.

We begin our episode with our monthly round up of prison disturbances contributed by Perilous Chronicle. We close out the episode with a call from Adrien Espinoza, who is currently housed in Maricopa County in Arizona. Espinoza, who got his paralegal degree inside, has contributed to the Prisoner Correspondence Project, the Silvia Rivera law project, and intends to work in the legal field upon release. He describes CRIPA, which is the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980. It’s a federal law intended to protect the rights of people in state or local correctional facilities, nursing homes, and other places where they are in the care of others. His account of his treatment- or lack thereof, in the case of mental health support- in the facility is tragically common.

Special thanks to Adrien and Perilous for their contributions to the show.

You can find out more about Perilous at perilouschronicle.com.

Adrien’s legal defense fund is: givebutter.com/help4adrien

Our news today is focused on the long-term consequences of incarceration.  Not only was one of the oldest juvies in the country finally shut down due to systemic abuse of young prisoners, but a number of old school imprisoned militants, from Khalfani Khaldun to Sundiata Acoli, are being hit with repression or are fighting for late-life release.  Reflecting prison’s extended arc of harmful impacts, we then focus on timeless words from Frank Smith.

Known as Big Black, Smith was a prisoner at Attica who participated in the uprising in 1971 and successfully organized the security for outside negotiators who entered the prison.  He was tortured by guards in retaliation for his role in the uprising, and gave the interview we are sharing today while being held in extended solitary confinement. We’ve aired some other parts of this interview in previous episodes, and in this selection, he talks about what conditions were like in Attica, and what he wanted to see changed within the institution.

This interview was originally broadcast by WBAI in February, 1972, and we share it now courtesy of Pacifica Radio Archives. 

You can hear our previous episodes with Smith here and here.

This week we continue to talk to our guests about prison phone industry giant Global Tel Link and its attempt to whitewash its image by donating money to Sesame Street. Recent grassroots activism from incarcerated people and advocates have led to a wave of legislation mandating reduced costs or even free phone calls in some cities and states.

Unfortunately, Tennessee is not one of those states according to an interview contributed by Jennifer Bamberg.  She spoke with Drew Morgan, comedian, writer and actor, about the cost of keeping in touch with his brother who is incarcerated in Tennessee.

This week, our guest is Bianca Tylek, who fills us in about the prison phone industry. GTL and Securus among others profit off of prisoners and their families by charging them exorbitant fees for access to the phone lines which are so key for surviving prison. Recent coverage confirming that Sesame Street had entered a partnership caused outrage and shone a light on the industry’s power and profitability. Recent grassroots activism from incarcerated people and advocates have produced a wave of legislation mandating reduced costs or even free phone calls in some cities and states.

Bianca Tylek is founder and executive director of Worth Rises, a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to dismantling the prison industry and ending the exploitation of those in its grip. Worth Rises works to return the economic resources extracted from affected communities, and are a key part of the prison phone justice movement.