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.

Transcript

The interview included a discussion around the impacts of incarceration on Elizabeth’s family. She recounts how officers entered her home without a warrant. Elizabeth shares how local police racially profiled and followed her children for several years.

The interviewee discussed how the carceral system and income impact their vision of health. Folks in their community need health care, but a lack of money prevents them from receiving care. Health to the participant comprises a variety of components. Although health care providers do not discriminate against formerly incarcerated individuals due to their association with the legal system, formerly incarcerated individuals experience economic discrimination. The interview also touched on prejudices that take place. People who have been incarcerated experience stigma associated with their incarceration. This stigma also impacts communities intergenerationally. The impacts of the carceral system impact generations of families in the communities. They concluded by discussing the impact of policing in the community and made parallels between incarceration and slavery. Mass incarceration includes policing. These aggressive policing conditions normalize the community to police discrimination and impact relationships between different people in the community. This policing changes how people interact with their geography. They navigated their community and life in order to avoid policing.

Ayoola works in a jail and does criminal justice advocacy. She spoke of working “on the front lines” of mass incarceration and “in the trenches.” Her interview addressed the lack of health care and the poor quality of existing health care within prisons. Ayoola spoke to the lack of visibility for those experiencing mental and physical illness due to incarceration. Many people both in and out of prison do not receive proper treatment. Those in prison are denied or made to wait for treatment because prison staff believes the individual is malingering. Those formerly incarcerated individuals have deteriorated health upon release and receive inadequate health care. Ayoola mentioned how working in prisons has an impact on the mental health of her family. Additionally, her interview touched on the effects that working in incarceration has on her health. She spoke of migraine headaches that she believes have to do with the constant exposure to stress in the prison environment. Ayoola wished that the country would acknowledge the parallels between incarceration and slavery.

Chaplain Muhammad decided to follow the steps of others in his family by becoming a chaplain of correctional facilities to pursue a mission of helping and bringing hope to those who are less fortunate than him. In this interview, he discusses how fulfilling this purpose is sometimes challenging partially because of the inhumane conditions and mistreatment in the prison system. He also talks about the importance of the spiritual support that chaplains like him offer to people in prisons.

Transcript

David Wynne shares his story of visiting people incarcerated in the same correctional institution he was held in thirty years ago. An important distinction he mentions is that he was placed in minimum security while the men he visits are in medium security. He revealed that while the sadness people experience in prison never changes. Over time, he observed how different people were treated and categorized between facilities. He also describes how he reconstructed his life through faith, family, and community support after his release. In his spare time, he is a coordinator for Books Through Bars, an organization that sends free books to prisons.

Transcript

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.

Transcript

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.

Transcript

In this interview, Imam Islam reflects on his mission as a chaplain of correctional facilities and the lessons that he shares with the communities and incarcerated people he has worked with throughout his many decades of faith-based service. He offers his thoughts on policing, racism, criminality, morality, politics, and Black social movements, among other topics. He talks about his first personal contact with prisons when, as a young man, he was shot by the police and incarcerated in New York City soon after returning from his military service in the Vietnam War. He also discusses the regrets he feels from having dealt drugs in his community. At the time of the interview, he works on a memoir narrating his life history and the stories of African Americans who convert to Islam while incarcerated.

Transcript