Indiana Women’s Prison

286 | Sick in the Indiana Women’s Prison

This week, we air an interview with WFYI reporters Lauren Bavis and Jake Harper in Indianapolis. They co-host the podcast called Sick, the second season of which focuses on health care issues in the Indiana Women’s Prison. As they share on the show, the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic ignited their interest in IWP and…

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224 | The Value of a Degree

After news, we share a conversation between Christina and Leslie about their experiences obtaining an education while in prison. Both women reflect on the barriers to getting a degree on the inside, and how effective the degree was in helping them once they got out. They also talk about some of the differences in educational…

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211 | The Same Amount of Work for an 8th of the Credit- Academic Bias Against Prisoners

This week marks our 4-year anniversary, and we would like to thank all those who have contributed their stories, labor, and expertise to Kite Line, making it possible to air news and experiences of incarceration for 211 consecutive episodes. Thank you! — In this episode, we share news from a major prison riot in Georgia,…

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209 | For the Sake of Knowledge Alone

We return this week to the second part of the conversation between Kristina Byers and Anastazia Schmid. Schmid is an award-winning, formerly incarcerated scholar who went to extraordinary lengths to complete her education on the inside. We last heard Schmid describe the impact of Ball State University, which she attended while in the Indiana Women’s…

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207 | When Success is an Anomaly

This week, we broadcast an interview digging into the problem of barriers to higher education during incarceration. This interview is between Kristina Byers and Anastazia Schmid, both  former inmates at the Indiana Women’s Prison. Anastazia speaks to the difficulties accessing a successful educational experience behind prison walls. These interviews conducted on the barriers to higher…

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200 | You Haven’t Demonstrated Enough For This Opportunity

Welcome to the 200th episode of Kite Line. This week, we revisit the important intersection of incarceration and higher education. Barriers to higher education are a key way the incarcerated and the formerly incarcerated are trapped by the system in a cycle of unemployment, low-wage work, and recidivism. We are proud to again host an interview…

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198 | Barriers to Higher Education

This core of this week’s Kite Line is a conversation between Anastazia Schmid and Jennifer Fleming about trying to get an education before, during, and after incarceration. You’ve likely heard Anastazia before on Kite Line, both while she was inside at the Indiana Women’s Prison, and since she was released last year. We will be…

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168 | Writing Our Histories: A Conversation with Anastazia Schmid, Part Three

This week, we finish our conversation with Anastazia Schmid. This time around, she talks about labels- and the media’s role in the stigmatization of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Schmid also talks to us about the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project, and other ways of presenting her historical research, especially outside of the academic setting,…

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167 | Apparatuses of Control, from Prison to Gynecology- A Conversation with Anastazia Schmid, Part Two

We return this week to our conversation with Anastazia Schmid. Speaking to her just weeks after her release, she talks about stigma and control- both for women and for the incarcerated. After spending 18 years in Indiana prison, her case was recently overturned- due largely to her own tenacity. During this part of the conversation,…

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166 | Truth and Trauma: A Conversation with Anastazia Schmid, Part One

This week, we share the first part of an interview with Anastazia Schmid. Schmid has appeared on Kite Line before, analyzing women’s health care in the prison system. Now, she joins us on the other side of the walls, talking through her release and subsequent support, and the meaning of truth in light of trauma….

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