The Permanent Record

Emily Galvin Almanza is a former public defender and the co-founder and executive director of Partners for Justice and the author of the new book The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender's Search for Justice in America . She was in Memphis recently to promote her book and meet with our local public defenders. We spoke to Emily as part of a book talk at Novel,...

In advance of the upcoming county elections, we sat down with each of the seven candidates for Shelby County Sheriff to ask questions about the jail, immigration enforcement, and public safety. Here is our final episode in that series, a conversation with Anthony Buckner. Be sure to listen to the other candidate interviews and then vote. Early voting ends April 30th and Election Day is May 5th!

In advance of the upcoming county elections, we sat down with each of the seven candidates for Shelby County Sheriff to ask questions about the jail, immigration enforcement, and public safety. Here is our sixth episode in that series, a conversation with Ricky Pollard. Be sure and check this feed before you vote; we'll post all seven interviews in the coming days. Early voting ends April 30th...

In advance of the upcoming county elections, we sat down with each of the seven candidates for Shelby County Sheriff to ask questions about the jail, immigration enforcement, and public safety. Here is our fifth episode in that series, a conversation with MarcoYzaguirre. Be sure and check this feed before you vote; we'll post all seven interviews in the coming days. Early voting ends April 30t...

In advance of the upcoming county elections, we sat down with each of the seven candidates for Shelby County Sheriff to ask questions about the jail, immigration enforcement, and public safety. Here is our fourth episode in that series, a conversation with Michael Pope. Be sure and check this feed before you vote; we'll post all seven interviews in the coming days. Early voting ends April 30th...

In advance of the upcoming county elections, we sat down with each of the seven candidates for Shelby County Sheriff to ask questions about the jail, immigration enforcement, and public safety. Here is our third episode in that series, a conversation with Keisha Scott. Be sure and check this feed before you vote; we'll post all seven interviews in the coming days. Early voting ends April 30th...

In advance of the upcoming county elections, we sat down with each of the seven candidates for Shelby County Sheriff to ask questions about the jail, immigration enforcement, and public safety. Here is our second episode in that series, a conversation with Brad Less. Listen to each interview and get out and vote! Early voting ends April 30th and Election Day is May 5th.

In advance of the upcoming county elections, we sat down with each of the seven candidates for Shelby County Sheriff to ask questions about the jail, immigration enforcement, and public safety. Here is our first episode in that series, a conversation with Reginald Hubbard. Listen to each interview and then get out and vote! Early voting ends April 30th and Election Day is May 5th.

Mark Luttrell was the Sheriff of Shelby County, Tennessee for eight years beginning in 2002. He was then elected Shelby County Mayor for two terms. When he became Sheriff more than 20 years ago, Luttrell inherited a very unstable and chaotic situation at the Shelby County Jail. Violence, poor management, and overcrowding were the norm. Under Sheriff Luttrell's leadership, the jail went from a...

State Representative Justin J. Pearson represents District 86 in the Tennessee General Assembly. Though he's best known for getting expelled by Republican leadership in 2023 after speaking out about gun violence, Rep. Pearson has been a vocal advocate and skilled community organizer for years. He's joining us at our 10-year celebration, Stand Up with Just City, on June 8th, so we thought w...

The Tennessee General Assembly is speeding toward adjournment in the next few weeks, and some of the bigger issues and decisions are coming into focus. Stella Yarbrough of ACLU-TN rejoins the podcast this week for an update and discussion on some of the bills that interest us - voting rights restoration, the 1st Amendment, and constitutional amendments are all being considered. So is a new funding...

The recent spike in deaths in the Shelby County Jail resulted in quite a bit of media coverage and a tour of the jail for local journalists. Unfortunately, Brittany Brown and Katherine Burgess from MLK50: Justice through Journalism were not invited on the tour. So we invited them to join us on the podcast! We talked about that decision by the Sheriff; we discussed the history of jail conditions in...

Criminal justice and public safety make headlines everyday in our community. The Permanent Record will take you behind the news reports and help you understand what keeps us safe and what doesn't. Listen as Just City Executive Director, Josh Spickler and the Legal Director at ACLU of TN, Stella Yarbrough, talk about the latest from Memphis and beyond. In this episode, Josh and Stella discuss t...

We're shaking up the Permanent Record for 2025. Criminal justice policy, crime, and public safety make headlines everyday in our community. So, for the next few months we're going to shift from an interview format to one that offers news and analysis, and we're going to be recording more often. To help us out with this new style, we invited our friend Stella Yarbrough, Legal Director a...

We're shaking up the Permanent Record for 2025. Criminal justice policy, crime, and public safety make headlines everyday in our community. So, for the next few months we're going to shift from an interview format to one that offers news and analysis, and we're going to be recording more often. To help us out with this new style, we invited our friend Stella Yarbrough, Legal Director a...

In the second of two episodes highlighting our Court Watch program, defense attorney Kaitlin Beck and student intern Lily Resha talk with longtime Court Watch leader, Yonée Gibson. Their discussion touches on the value of court watch from an attorney perspective, the unexpected patterns that emerge after months of observing criminal court, and how one watcher ended up becoming a witness. Just City...

Just City's Court Watch program enlists community members to observe Shelby County's criminal courtrooms and empowers them to record what they see and hear. These volunteer watchers bring much-needed transparency and accountability to a criminal court system that is often more opaque and obscure than it should be. In the first of two episodes of this special series spotlighting Court Watch...

Mark Loughney returns to The Permanent Record. We last spoke to Mark while he was incarcerated in Pennsylvania. We first met Mark when The Marshall Project covered his Prison Portraits exhibit. Work from Mark's Pyrrhic Defeat series is always on display at the Just City office in downtown Memphis. Mark's new series, "Prison Buddies", will be on display in Memphis at the Goodwyn Gal...

Director Sylvia Ryerson discusses her film Calls From Home after a live screening hosted by Just City on April 13, 2024. The film follows a weekly radio broadcast that serves as an important communication tool for the families of incarcerated people in rural Appalachia.

Jacob Steimer, a journalist with MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, recently authored a series of stories on the presence of lead in neighborhoods across Memphis. He joined us to discuss the science of lead poisoning and how effective abatement strategies can help to lower crime rates. This episode was recorded live as part of A Day With Just City.

In this special conversation with Cincinnati Black United Front’s Iris Roley, she shares her pioneering experience in seeking police accountability by centering Black community members in reform. She shares the story of filing a first-of-its-kind racial profiling class action settlement that led to a Collaborative Agreement between police and the community that has seen use of force and arrests ha...

Professor Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at UT-Austin joins us to delve into options for oversight as we see a rise in jail deaths, the risks of treating children as adults in the criminal legal system, and alternatives and best practices for jails. She discusses the importance of empathy for people in the criminal justice system and emphasizes we can have safety an...

Insha Rahman, vice president for advocacy and partnership at the Vera Institute of Justice and expert on bail and pretrial detention, joined us to help correct misunderstandings about bail, and she points out that reforming pretrial detention can make our communities both safe and just. She parses out the politics from the policies both nationally and in Shelby County, Tennessee, where significant...

They Knew Which Way to Run is a stunning look at the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy in India. The 7-part podcast series takes us on an amazing exploration of themes often discussed on The Permanent Record. Themes like accountability, pain, harm, and how we deal with those as human beings.

A few short weeks after the killing of Tyre Nichols, UCLA Law Professor Joanna Schwartz released a very timely book. It's called  Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable.  In it, she describes how current law makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to hold police accountable when they violate the rights of those they are sworn to protect. She has a deep understanding of the law an...