Professor Brad shares his experience as an advocate, activist, attorney, and researcher within the criminal legal system. He describes the intersections of mass incarceration and public health, explaining the hyperincarceration of Black and Brown communities as an epidemic that can be solved only in conjunction with solving the issues and barriers to equitable healthcare in the United States. Brad also explains his current research on solitary confinement reform, as well as promising outcomes for creating cultures of wellness within prisons in an attempt to alleviate, at least in the short term, the negative community health outcomes exacerbated and caused by the carceral system.

A formerly incarcerated veteran, Al, talks about his experience in the Navy and how being a veteran has impacted his experience with the criminal justice system.

The interviewee spoke to their experiences working as a social worker providing mental health services in the criminal justice system. She described different approaches to working with clients, whether more restrictive or ones that offer more autonomy. Additionally, she offers her experiences in confronting the hierarchies and “rules” that govern mental health in the criminal justice system and the ways mental health professionals become overshadowed by correctional officers, police officers, and judges. Overall, she expresses her affinity for restorative approaches in working with incarcerated individuals.

Victoria shares how her personal experience with the carceral system shapes her writing and activist work. She describes her publications about resistance and organizing in women’s prisons and how her research connected her to producing a zine written and illustrated by incarcerated women.

The interviewee spoke on their experiences as a mental health provider in a reentry program that coordinates with a women’s prison. The participant reflects on how their clients’ sought a space to speak on mental health. The participant observed that incarcerated people felt unable to express their struggles with mental health within the prison system because of a “prison culture.” The participant did not witness specific mistreatment against incarcerated people within their field. The participant also emphasized their belief in a rehabilitative approach when working with incarcerated people. From the participant’s perspective, many incarcerated people have undergone trauma that needs to be addressed through a public health perspective. In working with the reentry program, the participant was surprised at how incarcerated women took the initiative in completing their tasks within the reentry program, and based on these experiences, the participant supports giving more autonomy to incarcerated people.

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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