Kite Line

For this week’s episode, we share a conversation between Melanie D. Newport and Anne Gray Fisher. They talk about the history of Cook County Jail- the largest facility in the country.

Melanie D. Newport is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of Connecticut-Hartford. Her work explores the criminal justice system in the United States since the 1950s. Melanie is currently writing a history of Cook County Jail in Chicago called Community of the Condemned: Chicago and the Transformation of the American Jail. Community of the Condemned focuses on how incarcerated people and their allies resisted and fought the transformation of American jails in the postwar era. Melanie has taught at Garden State Youth Correctional Facility in New Jersey and she has trained with the Inside-Out Prison Education exchange. Anne Gray Fisher is the interviewer, and she teaches history at the University of Texas, Dallas.

This week, we share a panel that took place last week in Indianapolis. As we heard last episode, Indiana Against E-Carceration has been organizing to educate the public about the issues surrounding electronic monitoring. They are struggling to prevent the grim possibility that sentencing and jail “reforms” set for 2020 will lead to an explosion of e-carceration, as surveillance paid for by prisoners turn homes and workplaces into the new prisons.  In this panel, we importantly hear first-hand accounts from people who’ve survived electronic monitoring and its accompanying cycles of re-incarceration, and learn more about the campaign against e-carceration.

This week, we share a statement from former political prisoner Ray Luc Levassuer about the recent death of his comrade, Tom Manning. Then, we speak with Micol Seigel about e-carceration, otherwise known as electronic monitoring. Seigel works with the group Indiana Against E-Carceration, who have a series of upcoming events lifting the voices of people affected by e-carceration. In this interview, Seigel discusses the unforeseen complications, burdens, and tragedies produced by electronic monitoring – everything from prohibitive costs to users to to the punitive measures those users face when their monitoring devices malfunction.

This week, we hear from two people- Faith, who talks to us about the practice of inmate lending- and Jason Renard Walker, who speaks on the retaliation he is facing inside. We spoke to Faith at the Fight Toxic Prisons convergence recently, and she told us about the practice of inmate lending, where prisons bid for labor in the form of prisoners from other facilities. This practice often leads to prisoners being shipped to facilities to work in locations very far from their families. Interstate prisoner transfers have recently reached Indiana as well, where the Department of Corrections is experimenting with them as a method of isolating prison militants, like Shaka Shakur, who has been sent to Virginia.

After Faith, we have a statement entitled “Retaliation 101” by Jason Renard Walker, who calls in from the Allred Unit in Iowa City, Texas. Again, we apologize for the sound quality, and will provide a transcript of the essay he is reading on our website. He talks about the retaliation and harassment, along with other inhumane conditions he’s been experiencing.

This week, we hear reflections from members of the MOVE Organization. Speaking at the 2019 Fight Toxic Prisons convergence, they give their thoughts on the past and current struggles of MOVE family members behind bars.  Mike Africa, Jr., who was born in prison, speaks about the MOVE Organization, and having his parents on the inside during most of his life. His mother, Debbie Africa, tells the story about birthing Mike Jr. in prison and successfully keeping him for several days in her prison cell, unknown to prison authorities. Mike Africa, Sr. also shares information about the MOVE Organization, and tells the story of Chuck Africa, who is still imprisoned.

We’ve interviewed other members of the MOVE Organization before. You can hear our 2017 interview with Ramona Africa here.