Ronald is a formerly incarcerated person who defended himself in prison, succesfully advocated for his own release, and now works as a nationally recognized activist for prison reform. The interview goes over Simpson-Bey’s experience as an incarcerated person, and as a leader within his prison family. In this, we hear stories of dehumanization, found family, and the barriers to education within the prison system. Simpson-Bey also describes life after prison and his vision for the future of incarceration through the decarceration movement. Simpson-Bey calls for an end to the systemic injustice of mass incarceration as it exists today.

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In this interview, Imam Encarnación narrates his experiences of serving as a chaplain of maximum and medium-security correctional facilities for twelve years. In his work in the prisons, he witnessed continuous violence against incarcerated people, from verbal abuse to rampant negligence to physical torture. He is highly critical of the structural conditions that bring people to prisons and subject them to “brutality,” in his words, once they are there. “The system is built to destroy Black and Brown men,” he concludes. As a warning, this interview contains detailed descriptions of physical violence, verbal abuse, overt racism, and torture that may be disturbing to some.

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Chaplain Coate’s first contact with incarcerated people happened when he was in college and started writing letters to people in prisons. He continued developing meaningful bonds with incarcerated people as a volunteer vising correctional facilities every week for over six years. Finding his purpose in serving incarcerated people as a faith-based leader, he decided to leave the Ph.D. program he attended and become a chaplain of correctional facilities. In this journey, he has encountered many challenges but has remained inspired by his service’s contribution to the lives of people he has reached. In this interview, he discusses how his position allows him to see many angles of prisons’ apparatus. These angles include the slow bureaucracy involved in implementing educational programs for incarcerated people, the “wall of silence” among staff to cover their abuses and wrongdoings, and the overrepresentation of African Americans in the carceral population of Wisconsin. Chaplain Coate also reflects on the stigma against incarcerated people that he sees in his Muslim communities in Wisconsin and the conversations that he has with fellow Muslims to dismantle these stereotypes.

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In this interview, a case manager at both Reentry Campus Program and the Nonviolence Institute in Providence Rhode Island explains the variety of services her organization offers to assist individuals currently or previously incarcerated. She describes how her organizations work collaboratively with others within and outside of the state to provide comprehensive services for individuals at all reentry phases. She discusses how many of the state’s reentry services are accessed by word of mouth. She also discussed the unique difficulties people with incarceration experience face when looking for employment and housing.

Next, she talked about some of the challenges she has faced in providing services to incarcerated or formerly incarcerated individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. She describes how some of the services her organizations offer have pivoted or expanded and improve client services during the pandemic. Additionally, many of her clients faced technology access and knowledge barriers early in the pandemic, making navigating the reentry process more difficult.

She also described how the reentry programs she is a part of function as a larger community. Many of her current co-workers were former clients of the Reentry Campus Program or the Nonviolence Institute or had prior experiences with incarceration. Finally, she discussed the challenges of working against larger systems of oppression and racism that impact the lives of her clients. She ends on a positive note, describing how her organizations are working toward changing Rhode Island policies that disadvantage individuals with incarceration history and incorporating people with lived experience into policy discussions.