Rattling The Bars

The housing and affordability crisis is getting worse, and more people around the country are facing the grim reality of homelessness. Rather than treating housing as a human right and committing to large-scale construction of accessible housing, states like California are responding with police raids of homeless encampments and imprisonment for unhoused people. On this episode of Rattling the Bar...

The issue of mass incarceration has been far less central to the 2024 election thus far in comparison to the 2020 presidential race. However, that doesn't make the matter any less pressing for incarcerated people, their loved ones, or the activists fighting tirelessly to free prisoners. There are a range of ways presidential candidates could commit to ending mass incarceration, but one tool stands...

On Aug. 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Police left Brown's lifeless body in the hot sun for four hours, plainly demonstrating the contempt of law enforcement for the local community. The righteous rebellion that followed in Ferguson shook the nation and the world, turning the Black Lives Matter movement that had begun following the earlier murder of T...

The 2024 US elections are just three months away, and with polls showing a tight race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the outcome may come down to voter turnout—and data show that  there is a direct correlation between income level and voter turnout. As Katherine Hapgood recently wrote in an article for the  Washington City Paper , "Of the roughly 35 million Americans living at or below th...

The number of homeless people in the United States, either without shelter or in temporary housing, is steadily rising towards a million people. Faced with this crisis, municipalities, counties, and states across the country are responding by criminalizing those experiencing homelessness. Advocate and activist Jeff Singer joins  Rattling the Bars  to discuss the  Grants Pass v. Johnson  ruling, an...

A 42-year-old Black woman, Adrienne Boulware, has died in the custody of the California Department of Corrections at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, CA. On July 4, prison guards exposed Boulware to extreme temperatures outdoors during a heatwave for 15 minutes, leaving her with just a small glass of water in the over 110 F heat. Boulware began to exhibit symptoms of heat exh...

The modern prison system's origins in slavery can be seen in telltale signs throughout the system. The system of chattel slavery had no incentive to keep Black families together—in fact, separation was deliberately used to punish the enslaved. Today, the prison system mirrors this in its treatment of families of the incarcerated. Prisoners are denied the opportunity to be fully present parents by...

One of the most persistent myths about the US prison system is that the system of mass incarceration helps deter and change harmful behavior. Yet according to the federal government's own statistics, more than  80 percent of formerly incarcerated people will be arrested within a decade after their release. The astronomical rate of recidivism reflects two realities: the prison system targets people...

It's been 40 years since supervised release was first introduced into the federal court system by the 1984 Sentencing Reform Act. Supervised release, which replaced federal parole and probation, is a secondary sentence judges can impose that only comes into effect once people have already served their time in prison. The legality of the widespread use of supervised release, not to mention its over...

For the past 54 years, Thomas 'Tahaka' Gaither has lived behind bars as a political prisoner. A former member of the Black Panther Party Baltimore Chapter, Gaither was a close associate of 'Marshall' Eddie Conway Jr., who spent his last years as host of Rattling the Bars. Although Gaither was released on parole decades ago, he was  forced to return to prison in the late 1990s when Gov. Glendening...

The prison system keeps millions of families from celebrating Father's Day together. For Alexia Pitter of  Families Against Mandatory Minimums , separation from her father, Gasi Pitter, has been a lifelong reality. Kept from even embracing her father during prison visits as a child, Alexia's struggle to build and maintain a relationship with Gasi has required taking on the entire prison system. Af...

The lived reality of the racist prison system can get lost in the swirl of facts and figures surrounding mass incarceration. Frigid cells in winters and sweltering conditions in summers; the volatility and capriciousness of hostile guards and correctional staff; food barely fit for human consumption; isolation from one's community and deprivation from the routines and small freedoms that made up o...

In 1977, American Indian Movement member Leonard Peltier was convicted of the murder of two FBI agents, and has remained a political prisoner of the US ever since. Peltier's conviction has long been contested by activists and legal experts. Despite the recantation of three key witnesses, his case has never been brought back to trial. Peltier has been eligible for parole since 1992, and the federal...

Despite now spending 47 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, Leonard Peltier continues to be denied parole by the federal government of the United States. Why has the US so obstinately refused to free Peltier, despite decades of international outcry? The answer lies in the threat posed by what Peltier represents—the demands of the Indigenous liberation movement for sovereignty and just...

The oppression of Black people is more than just a historical or political question. The accumulated harms of centuries of slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, and racism in all forms have a psychological and medical effect, in addition to political and economic ones. Trauma, after all, describes the physical injury of the brain as a result of harmful experiences. At the scale of communities...

Critics of the prison industrial complex have long noted the system's failure to properly rehabilitate those who are locked away in its bowels. Christina Merryman and Ameena Deramous return to Rattling the Bars for the second part of a  two-part interview on the reality facing prisoners in Maryland's only women's correctional facility. Click here to listen to Part 1 Studio Production: David Hebden...

For decades, prisoners' rights advocates have called on the State of Maryland to address its flagrant discrimination against prisoners housed in the state's sole women's prison. As The Real News has previously reported, conditions in the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women are akin to "torture," and the lack of resources and services dedicated to incarcerated women amounts to state-sanctione...

The prevalence of sexual violence in the US prison system is so widespread and accepted that it's often made the butt of jokes in popular culture. Yet the reality is that countless survivors of the prison system carry the scars and traumas of sexual abuse—and for many, the perpetrators of these crimes were the very prison staff charged with their protection. Juvenile victims of the prison system a...

From Assata Shakur to Leonard Peltier, social movements have lifted up political prisoners as revolutionary examples and fought protracted, often decades-long campaigns to secure their release. Now, a new collection from AK Press, Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners , gathers the experience and wisdom of some 30 political prisoners in one place for the first ti...

The system of mass incarceration in the US offers few second chances to prisoners, and Maryland is no exception. As The Real News has previously reported , the state's parole system puts incarcerated people at the mercy of an inefficient, capricious process that is unlikely to deliver a speedy release for many. Now, a new bill in the Maryland legislature could create new pathways to freedom for pr...

A group of current and former prisoners have sued the state of Alabama with the support of two unions who have signed on as co-plaintiffs, the Union of Southern Service Workers, and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The lawsuit claims that Alabama's system of prison labor amounts to a "modern-day form of slavery" that generates massive profits for private businesses and revenues fo...

The US has one of the highest prisoner recidivism rates in the world: over 70% of incarcerated people who are released from prison in the US will be rearrested within five years of their release date. That is not an accident. Our system of mass incarceration sets people up to fail as they leave the prison system and try to reintegrate into society. That is why organizations like Hope for Prisoners...

The crisis of mass incarceration is about more than the conduct of police officers—it's a question of public expenditures, and how pouring taxpayer money into incarceration at the expense of other, more humanizing ventures takes a toll on society at large. As public schools and public health programs across the nation grapple with a host of preventable problems arising from underinvestment, state...

Black people have produced their own historical accounts as long as Black people have been in America. From oral tradition to the first publications of Phyllis Wheatley, to the many Black publishing houses and newspapers that blossomed after emancipation, Black people have always been the foremost chroniclers and documenters of their own stories. Now, a new collection compiles some 400 historical...

Last June, the state of Wisconsin placed two correctional institutions in Green Bay and Waupun on lockdown due to concerns about overcrowding and the quality of facilities. In the ensuing months, several other Wisconsin state prisons have been affected by the lockdown, and Gov. Evers has yet to present a clear plan to end it. Meanwhile, thousands of incarcerated people have been trapped in horrend...