Prison Radio Show

Tonight, we're going to take gender diversity for granted. We're going to say that trans people are real, and we're going to talk about the facts that are behind linear stories. We'll be speaking to transactivists, legal scholars, as well as lawyers who work on this topic, to provide a different perspective than what's being discussed in corporate media. 

On the two-year anniversary of the latest escalation of violence in Gaza, this episode turns its focus to solidarity with the Palestinian people. We open with major breaking news: Israel's naval forces have intercepted a large international humanitarian flotilla — the largest of its kind yet — detaining approximately 3,500 activists from over 40 countries, including high-profile figures like Greta...

Today, we'll be airing a radio documentary we made back in May 2019. 
Somehow, the documentary never made it into our archives, and so we wanted to share it here again. The documentary talks about the new prison for migrants that was being built at the time, and the alternatives, the detention program that was being rolled out alongside the prison construction project. It also talks about the resi...

Today is the prisoner's justice state episode on prison radio show.  This year we are celebrating 50 years of prisoners Justice Day. We will be airing audio from the prisoners justice day events that took place in Montreal on Prisoners Justice Day on Sunday, August 10th. 

This inaugural episode of a very special series called Prison Radio Internationale. From those of you who may be new listeners, Prison Radio is a bi-weekly show at CKUT that brings you news and stories about people who are incarcerated in prisons and struggling against the greater prison industrial complex. Usually our show focusses on issues based in where our listeners live. 
In Canada and the U...

This episode is focussing on prisoners justice day. It's the 50th prisoners justice day that just went by on Sunday, August 10th, and we are focussing this episode and highlighting what prisoners justice day is. 

This episode covers a panel discussion on prison labour in Canada. Key points include that prisoner pay has been frozen at a maximum of $6.90/day since 1981, that the work prisoners do is effectively forced labour with real economic value, and that there is an ongoing legal effort to have prisoners recognized as employees with the right to unionize. Panellists include a government investigator, ac...

This episode covers the criminalization of Indigenous land defense, provides a news update on Ontario provincial prison conditions, and discusses policies and realities faced by incarcerated trans persons, hearing from lawyers, activists, and scholars working and advocating in this area.

Today we're airing audio from the Final Straw Radio which airs on Asheville FM in North Carolina.  Their show on June 23rd featured 2 interviews one talking about the annual "Shut'em Down Week of Action", called by jailhouse lawyer speak for December of this year and one talking with Monsour Owolabi sharing some perspectives on inside outside collaboration, the role of isolation in prisons as coun...

  Today's episode features a book launch event that took place on April 11th at the Shift Centre.   The book is titled "Defund: Conversations towards abolition" published by Haymarket Books.   The book features the collection of interviews with prison abolitionist organizers and thinkers on how to bridge the divide between reform and abolition.   Calvin John Smiley is the books author; he's also a...

This episode focused on Palestinian prisoners and featured an interview with the Director of the International Committee of the Palestinian Prisoners' Society, Rahid Ahmer, who is based in Nablus in the West Bank.   As always the audio from the previous show bleeds into the start of this one! We are trying to catch up with a year of shows that have been absent in our podcast feed and so we have be...

This show was our funding drive special! We talked to folks on parole and people in prison about why CKUT and the Prison Radio Show matters to them. Then the hosts share a bit about why they care about the show and their motivations for volunteering with the station. 

This episode featured audio from a panel discussion that happened in March 2025 in Montreal. It was part of the Rafales Anarchist Learning Camp, organized by the Revolutionary Anarchist Organization. The panel was on police and prison abolition and featured Mélina from the Comité Autonome du Travail du Sexe, Marquis Bey who is a professor of Black Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and English...

This episode features a special interview with Maryam Kashani, an associate professor at the University of Illinois and an organizer with Believers Bail Out, a "community led effort to bailout Muslims in pretrial and immigration incarceration towards abolition". Professor Kashani published the book Medina by the Bay in 2023, which was "an ethnocinematic examination of how multiracial Muslim commun...

This episode featured audio from organizers with the International Coalition for Palestinian Hostages, including their spokesperson Dr. Mai Hussein. This exclusive Prison Radio Show interview was recorded in August 2024. The audio is taken straight from the CKUT archives and includes a small bit of the show that airs before PRS. 

This episode featured archival and live footage from the New Years Eve Noise Demo in Montreal, an annual event where people gather outside prisons and send holiday greetings to people locked up inside. The event features fireworks, speeches, music, and banners all in support of prisoners.

This episode focused on migrant justice and prisoner justice. We shared audio from a demonstration that took place in November 2024 outside the immigration detention centre in Laval, Quebec. The demonstration was organized by Solidarity Across Borders in solidarity with a Colombian family who was facing deportation at the hands of the Canadian Border Services Agency. We also shared some audio from...

This episode featured audio from a conference called Abolitionist Initimicies that happened from June 29-July 1, 2024 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Information on the conference can be found here: https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/events/view/abolitionist-intimacies-symposium The panel we aired is the following: Incarcerated Workers and the Labour Movement: Asserting the Fundamental Rights of Prisoners by ...

This episode featured audio from the Prisoner Justice Day events of August 10, 2024. 

This episode featured an interview with Lauren Aarons. She is one of the authors of a recently released report from Amnesty International entitled Aftermath: Injustice, Torture and Death in Detention in North-East Syria (available here: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/MDE24/7752/2024/en/ ). The report talks about the conditions in the camps and prisons where Islamic State fighters, affiliates...

The episode features a panel discussion from the Asian Prisoner Support Committee and 18 Million Rising about their present campaign to demand a pardon for the APSC4. We hear from the APSC4: Kee, Bun, Maria and Peejay. They are four staff members with the Asian Prisoner Support Committee—and all are at risk of deportation. They talk about the work of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee as well as...

This is the first episode of Prison Radio Show's new series on the mass incarceration of Palestinians by Israel into Israeli prisons.  On today's show we feature an interview with Raed Amer, the president of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, / sometimes translated as the Palestinian Prisoner's Club Association is an independent, national, humanitarian, social, and popular association founded on Se...

This show featured audio from a workshop given by the Termite Collective as part of the Concordia Student Union's teach-in during their three day strike in January 2024. The workshop was about prisoner justice organizing and featured a "True or False" questionnaire about the Canadian prison system. Show also features two Bob Marley song requests from a prisoner in Riviere des Prairies prison. 

This show featured two audio recordings from prisonradio.org that were aired at the top of the show. We then shared audio from the annual New Years Eve Noise Demo which happened in Laval, Quebec on the evening of December 31, 2023 outside of four different carceral institutions - two federal prison for men, one co-ed provincial prison, and one migrant prison. 

This show featured audio from a panel discussion that happened at UQAM in September. The panel was part of a  symposium was called Penser les catégories pénales à l'aune des sciences sociales. The panel itself was called Perspective queer et luttes anti-carcérales. We also opened the show commemorating the passing of Ed Mead.