Prison Breakdown

Professor Beck Strah and Producer Brit talk about Beck’s various jobs, Derek Chauvin news, and then they review the first episode of Prison Break from 2005 in which they discuss prison stores, murdering the vice president’s brother, conjugal visits, Stacy Keach, trash fires, gifts made with prison labor, dated effects, and Alien: Romulus (2024)

Professor Beck Strah and Producer Brit ask is Eric the meat of our sandwich?, the fish sloppy joe challenge, the Stateville Correctional Center getting depopulated due to bad conditions, swimming the Alcatraz escape route, the big weird time out, the would-be escapees of the Battle of Alcatraz, The Battle of Alcatraz: the escape attempt, the officer resistance, and what went wrong. They also discuss the show Prison Break and Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre (2016) and doing your prison break in the most ethical way possible.

Professors Eric Bronson and Beck Strah discuss energy drinks, Warheads, cruel and unusual lack of air conditioning in Texas prisons, the Birdman of Alcatraz, Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Charles Manson’s Music, Doc Barker, Creepy Karpis, felons in marketing, The Jail: Managing the Underclass in American Society by John Keith Irwin, and The Haunting of Alcatraz (2020).

Professors Beck Strah and Eric Bronson discuss an update to the story of Christopher Dunn, convicting the right person vs. convicting some person, the Alcatraz lighthouse, the discovery of Alcatraz, Millard [Mallard] Fillmore, the problems with making a wooden prison, Alcatraz’s relatively small capacity, the prison’s conditions and privileges, the economics of Alcatraz, the 1969 Indigenous Alcatraz Protests, Jack LaLanne’s handcuffed swim, and The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

Today Professors Eric Bronson and Beck Strah discuss a Missouri prison ignoring a court order to release a wrongly-convicted inmate, the story of the Mecklenburg Six; six death row inmates who escaped a Virginia prison, keeping snakes as pets, prison control rooms, eating your way to a better sentence, bombs as escape mechanisms, Life as a Jailer: Through the Officers Eyes by Capt. Joe DeFranco and K9 Officer Tom Duncan, and Deathrow Gameshow (1987).

Today Professors Eric Bronson and Beck Strah discuss a Wisconsin warden charged with the deaths of inmates, incarcerated former LEOs and COs, therapy through magic, interrupting division via magic, the limitations of magic in real life interventions, magic as an introduction to cognitive behavioral therapy, Magic the Gathering in prison, magician criminals, and Derek DelGuado’s In and Of Itself (2020).

Profs Beck Strah and Eric Bronson discuss Trump’s First Step Act, halfway houses and home confinement, prison magic in media, Harry Houdini and why there’s no movie about him, Criss Angel, David Blaine, magic as rehabilitation, the question magicians get most from inmates, OG (2018) and Madeline Sackler.

Profs Eric Bronson and Beck Strah discuss wrongful incarceration compensation, the Pennsylvania Model, solitary and recidivism, solitary and incapacitation, alternative options for solitary, solitary as a means of gang separation, individual inmate experiences in solitary, virtual reality in solitary, and Ricky Stanicky (2024).

Profs Eric Bronson and Beck Strah interview Lt. Joshua Kennedy of West Warwick Police Department and formerly of Rhode Island Department of Corrections. Also discussed are Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America by Brett Story (2019) and Madea Goes to Jail (2009).

Profs Eric Bronson and Beck Strah discuss Abiding Citizen (2009) and Bronson (2008) with Producer Brit.