Compassionate Release

293 | Freedom for Leonard Peltier

We begin this episode with our monthly round up of prison disturbances, generously compiled by Perilous Chronicle. Afterwards, we share a piece by IU graduate student Kayan Tara about the death of Malik Ali Malik, who died during a police chase in Bloomington last spring. Then, we return to the topic of long-term prisoner Leonard…

Read More

283 | Revolutionaries in Isolation

This week, Mwalimu Shakur calls us from inside Corcoran prison in California to share his experiences in the Secure Housing Unit. He’s been on the show before, talking about the gladiator fights used by guards to punish and control the imprisoned population. Housed in Corcoran for decades, he describes how he kept going under such…

Read More

245 | Harsh Debts

Up first, we have a comprehensive overview of prisoner protests compiled by Perilous Chronicle, who are collecting information about the many prison uprisings and disturbances now occurring regularly. They will be sharing these updates with us each month. For our feature this week, we share the first part of a conversation with Balagoon, an Indiana…

Read More

231 | A System That is Quite Frankly Unjust- Compassionate Release, Part Two

Today, we broadcast Part 2 of our series on Compassionate Release. Compassionate Release is the principle that sentences should be adjusted given “particularly extraordinary or compelling circumstances which could not reasonably have been foreseen by the court at the time of sentencing”. We now continue to hear from Alison Guernsey, who tells us about the…

Read More

230 | Compassionate Release, Part One

We begin this week with a follow-up conversation with Cory Cardinal, who has spoken with us on our past two episodes regarding a hunger strike at the Saskatoon Provincial Correctional Centre in Saskatchewan, Canada. Previously, Cory detailed his experiences during and after the hunger strike. And now, he gives us some updates and tells Perilous…

Read More

205 | The High Stakes of Institutional Racism During COVID-19

This week, we share a phone conversation between Kijana Tashiri Askari and C, one of their outside supporters. Askari is incarcerated in the California Medical Facility- a male-only state carceral medical institution.The recorded this conversation earlier this week, about the conditions Kijana and others are facing, including improper COVID-19 protocol on the part of the…

Read More

193 | The Guys in Here are Terrified: More Updates on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Prison

Prisoners across the US, and the world, face terrifying prospects as COVID-19 spreads almost uncontrolled inside the prison walls. It’s now or never as they and their loved ones struggle for their release, for adequate sanitation inside, and to self-organize pandemic response in the absence of serious measures by guards and administrators. We hear from…

Read More