Criminal - The Prison Newspaper

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

A little over sixty years ago, there were 250 prison newspapers being published on a regular basis. Today, there are 26. We visit Nash Correctional Institution in North Carolina to meet Phillip Vance Smith, II, the editor of The Nash News. Learn more about the American Prison Newspapers digitization project here. Listen to more of Fresh Air’s interview with Angolite editor Wilbert Rideau here. Special thanks to Terry Gross and Fresh Air, which is produced at NPR member station WHYY and distributed by NPR.  Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, and members-only merch. Learn more and sign up here. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. I was laying on the bunk and a guy walked by and gave me this little magazine. I said, what is that? He said, this is the Nash News. The Nash News is a newspaper written, edited, and produced by the men incarcerated at Nash Correctional Institution in Nashville, North Carolina. Tell me what it looked like and what you remember thinking as you were kind of looking through it. I was amazed that people in prison could produce such a thing. It wasn't a newsletter. It's just printed on paper. It wasn't photocopied. It had real pictures. It was glossy and it had weight to it. And I wondered,

you know, who allowed somebody to do this? This is Philip Vance Smith II. He's been incarcerated for 22 years, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting a man in 2001. Nash Correctional is a medium-security prison with two manufacturing plants, one that makes eyeglasses for incarcerated men and women, Medicaid patients and state employees, and a print plant.

The print plant is, I think, the 10th largest in the nation. It's also, I think, the second largest on the East Coast. They print business cards for state employees, school catalogs, stationery, and annual reports for local government agencies and courthouses. In 2005, two of the men working in the print plant wrote a formal proposal asking for permission to use the overstocked paper to create a newspaper. Brian Scott and Mark Pazinski, they came up with the idea. They pitched it to the plant manager. He approved it and they brought it to the warden and the rest is history. You know, every prison block has a bulletin board. We didn't want to be just a bulletin board. Nash News co-founder Brian Scott. We wanted to go beyond that. We wanted to tackle as difficult issues as we possibly could.

We also knew that we would be constrained in some of that simply because of the environment we were in. But that was the ideal, and that was our goal. And I'm happy to say that in many cases we've accomplished that. Brian Scott was released from prison in 2021 after 20 years. He founded a non-profit re-entry program called Our Journey. Now that you're out of prison, do you still read every issue? Definitely. In fact, it's the only newspaper I read.

I don't have as much time for that as I used to. I should say it's the only newspaper I read. I don't have as much time for that as I used to. I should say it's the only newspaper I read cover to cover. Phil Smith remembers that it was one of Brian Scott's articles that got him interested in working on the Nash News. It was about a man named David Marshall Williams. David Marshall Williams did time in the early 1900s. A lot of people have never heard of him. They should have.

He invented the M1 carbine rifle while he was serving time at Caledonia. He got a clemency from the governor. And during his lifetime, they bought six million of the rifles that he created while he was in prison. And Brian Scott wrote that article, you know, not to glorify guns, but to glorify the things that we can do behind bars, the things that we can be more, right? And so that's what drove me to the Nash News.

And what is your role now with the newspaper? I'm the editor of the Nash News. So as editor, I pretty much facilitate everything. When we have a meet, we have meetings every Saturday. I can imagine just like any other newsroom, we have 15 staff members. I'm assistant editor to the right, graphic designer to the left. We talk about existing projects. I ask guys what they would like to write about. We talk about what upcoming events are happening. We talk about gossip, the rumor mill, you know, what's going on over here? I heard such and such did this, right? And it's just a small community. I have a sports

guy. I have a guy who's good at writing profiles. I have a guy who's good more at academic writing. And so I try to figure out projects and articles that fit their specific genre. We spoke with Phil Smith in the prison visitation room. Three administrators sat in on our conversation. So you meet on Saturdays for your editorial meeting. Take me through kind of the whole process from meeting to print. Well, we try to plan three months ahead. We print quarterly. So I've already designed the

layout. I've already given them the articles. Most of the articles are already done. So I'll send somebody on assignment. They'll cover it. They'll take pictures. We take the pictures to the print planner or the camera. They upload the pictures. Graphic designer does the layout. He brings me a proof or emails it to our staff coordinator, Ms. Walco. I'll review the proof. My assistant editor reviews the proof. And we go through that round a few times until we're sure that all the kinks are out.

And then we ask the print plant if they will print it. The print plant will then decide if they have the stock. If they do, then it's laid up just like any other magazine they would print over there and it has to wait in line for their paying jobs to finish. And then we're printed last. How many copies do you print? It varies. Typically we print about a thousand. Is every person here given a copy of the news offered? Is it free?

It's free to everybody. And that's the idea. Initially, that's what the newspaper is for. We print enough for population. We read it, we share stories, you know. There's a long and complicated history of writing about life in prison, from inside prison, knowing you can be shut down by the administration at any time. In 1959, there were 250 prison newspapers being published on a regular basis. Today, there are 26, including the Nash News. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. North Carolina actually has a rich history of prison publications. The first one started in the early 1900s, and it was called The Prison News.

And incidentally, it started as a hobby craft. They brought in this little printing press just to give guys something to do. And they featured articles written by government officials and prison leaders. The articles written by prisoners were written as anonymous editorials. They had no bylines. That is the one that's known. There's also a lost history of prison publications. There's actually an unauthorized publication by prisoners.

And this research is maintained by a friend of mine. Her name is Dr. Amanda Bell Hewitt. She's writing a book about mass incarceration in North Carolina. So she writes about the North Carolina Prisoners Labor Union, which started in 1973. And what was so dynamic about them is they had a $14,000 grant. They took this money, wrote literature, sent it out, had it printed, and it was distributed to other prisons. I consider it unauthorized because it was combative to the prison system, and many of the prison leaders didn't like it. It was eventually shut down in 1977, and a lot of their work is lost. Like you can't find it anywhere. But we look back at that history and we wonder how the Nash News came to be after we had the

prison news, which was authorized. And then this one newspaper, which was used as a tool against the administration is now defunct. And I think what it relies on is the message, right? Our message is not combative to institution. We focus more on what we do to change ourselves. I think taking a different tact has enabled us to last so long. Now, there are times that we have written articles, I would say that I thought pushed the limit, but they were approved. Can we just start with you introducing yourself? My name is Charlotte Walco, and I've been at NASH for 13 years this month. Matter of fact, I'm the psychological services coordinator here, so I oversee the mental health department.

Charlotte Walco started working on the Nash News in 2015. As she puts it, she acts as the go-between between the newspaper staff and the prison administration. I was always a fan because I enjoyed when it came out, and I loved looking at the artwork and such, reading the articles. But at the time that I started here, the articles were a lot more about kind of what was going on at Nash. Like, for instance, if the Muslims had a feast after Ramadan, that would be a focus. Or, of course, the sports here was always something that was talked about. Very safe topics, I'd have to call them that. We started kind of getting a little more edgy. They have taken a bigger focus on mental health, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, because as we all know,

prison is the new psychiatric hospital because the treatment out there has kind of just disappeared. She told us about another piece by the paper's co-founder, Brian Scott, about the constitutionality of juveniles being sentenced to life in prison without parole. I have several on my caseload. They've been in prison since they were 16, 17 years old, and they've served 20, 25 years. And, you know,

one of them has no infractions on his record at all. So it's like, you know, kind of those things that I think are important to get out there. The piece ends with a group photo of six men at Nash Correctional who were sentenced to life without parole when they were teenagers. The youngest, Joseph Jones, was sentenced at 13. So at the time, no one had written an article in the national news talking about something like that. And we had one of the strictest wardens here at the time. So we submitted it to him, and he sent it back and was like, I love the article, just cite your sources.

He's like, I don't want you to just write anything. He said, I really understand and respect what you guys are doing. So I think there is definitely a balance. If we submit something that the administration feels is not right or something they don't want to publish, they'll let us know. And luckily, we haven't had that experience yet. There are Nash News pieces about COVID, a profile of Thurgood Marshall, articles about drug addiction, CrossFit,

and the importance of fantasy football to the men who live there. In one issue, a reporter named Kenneth Meeks wrote about the history and impact of restorative justice. There's information about a meditation group in memoriam notices for people who have died. Most issues contain a lot of art, sometimes drawings of famous people, Madonna, Mary J. Blige, Prince. There's a drawing of a man holding a baby called First Visit, and short stories and poems and comic strips. Phil Smith says for their next issue, a writer who is also a veteran named Joaquin Melendez is working on a piece about veterans with PTSD in prison. So he gives us the long and the short of how unaddressed issues can lead to crime.

We also have Kwame Teague, who is a creative writing instructor. He holds small workshops at times. And I got with him and I asked him to write just a small article to give people an introduction to what creative writing is. Because we have so many guys who are in prison who are looking for things to do. And so we try to help them along the way. And this would actually be a continuation of a column that we used to have called Grammar School, where we would actually put in, you know, what is an adjective, what is a noun,

what is sentence structure, subject and a predicate, things of that nature. At the end of every issue, there's a note that says, Perhaps you recently transferred to Nash Correctional Institution from another prison camp. If so, while we do not wish for anyone to be in prison, we welcome you to your new community. And under that, they print some information that might be useful, like the address of the prison, the phone number, and the names of the wardens. The oldest known prison newspaper was published in 1800 in a debtor's prison in New York.

A lawyer named William Cateltus couldn't pay his debts and was sent to prison. In the early 1800s, you could be sent to jail if you were $25 in debt, even less, sometimes $10. It's not known how much he owed, but William Cateltus couldn't afford to get himself out of jail by repaying the debts. So he decided to wage a campaign against the existence of debtors' prisons altogether, with a newspaper. He wrote, I conceive no method so effectual as the medium of the press, the first issue of William Cateltus' newspaper, Forlorn Hope, was published. The oldest continuously operating prison newspaper is the Prison Mirror, founded in 1887 by a group of men incarcerated at what was then called Stillwater State Prison, and today is known as the Minnesota Correctional Facility, Stillwater.

The Prison Mirror told readers that it was not established, nor is it to be run for the laudation of the prison administration. Its editor said, The Mirror belongs to the prison library. It is the convict's paper, and it will do all in its power to lighten the darkness of our prison cells. It still exists today, with the slogan, It's never too late to mend. In 2012, the prison mirror conducted an investigation into Minnesota lawmakers' use of prison canteen profits, money spent by prisoners.

The profits had previously flowed back to the inmates in the form of extras, like phones, movie rentals, and library books. Things not paid for by the Department of Corrections. The prison newspaper investigation found that in 2011, $1.2 million of canteen profits were instead used to offset state budget cuts. That same year, the San Quentin prison newspaper, the San Quentin News, released an investigation into an attempt by the California legislature to remove $68 million from the state's inmate welfare fund.

After the investigation was published in the prison newspaper, lawmakers reversed course. after the investigation was published in the prison newspaper Lawmakers' Reversed Course. Some of the most famous prison reporting in the country has come out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola. The Angolite was founded in 1952. A man named Wilbert Rideau spent 44 years at Angola, beginning in 1961. He tried to join the Angolite staff, which was all white men, and was rejected. And so he started his own prison publication, a magazine called The Lifer. Eventually, after mandatory desegregation policies were implemented in 1975, Wilbert Rideau was made editor of The Angolite.

Under his leadership, they won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the George Polk Award. It's about routine. It's about carbon-copied nothingness. Here he is on fresh air, speaking by phone from the office of the Angolite in the early 90s. Your entire existence is dedicated to trying to weave meaning into that, because every morning you wake up, you have to justify your existence to yourself. You know, because people in prison live for the same reasons you live. I mean, the same things that they have their dreams, they have their desires, they have their needs.

And prison is all about deprivation. It's all about pain, misery, and suffering. And the present is an intolerable situation. So the only thing that keeps you going is the hope of tomorrow. We'll be right back. Thank you. follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums,

and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. I just don't get it. Just wish someone could do the research on it. Can we figure this out? Hey, y'all. I'm John Blenhill, and I'm hosting a new

podcast at Vox called Explain It to Me. Here's how it works. You call our hotline with questions you can't quite answer on your own. We'll investigate and call you back to tell you what we found. We'll bring you the answers you need every Wednesday starting September 18th. So follow Explain It to Me, presented by Klaviyo.

There have been hundreds of prison newspapers over the years. There was one in 1937 in Oklahoma called the Granite Nugget. It had a staff of ten. The menu for Christmas Day was printed under a drawing of a Christmas tree. Turkey, cherry plate pie, celery, candied sweet potatoes, coffee. In a column called Babblings from the Shoe Factory, an unnamed writer says the prison is manufacturing more than 1,500 pairs of shoes per day. There was one from the early 70s in California called The Speaking Leaves.

The first issue reads, The Speaking Leaves is a publication put together by Indian inmates from within the walls of the California penal system. The editor describes a, quote, long, hard-fought battle for the approval to publish, and says, How about that? Once again, the Indian wins. But as always, we won't make it in history. There have been times when prison newspapers simply re-ran outside journalism, including pieces critical of the criminal justice system. In July of 1972, a Florida prison newspaper called What's Up reprinted a piece from the Washington Post about the parole process. Quote, the uncertainty and the mystery surrounding the parole process not only demeans the whole notion of rehabilitation,

but is also the most burdensome of all the antiquated aspects of our creaking penal system. Today, you can read What's Up, or The Speaking Leaves, or The Granite Nugget or The Nash News online. Since 2020, a small group of archivists have been scanning prison newspapers and putting them on the internet. We have done 208 individual newspapers, and that's of, like, yesterday. And with those, we're always including as many issues of each as I can get my hands on.

And we've done about over 198,000 pages, and there's a ton more to do. Anne Ray is the managing editor of the nonprofit Reveal Digital. Just to give you a sense of, like, the scale, when I started working on this project, we had identified about 500 individual newspapers from across the centuries and spanning all 50 states, including D.C. And that's, like, a lot on its own. But since then, our own list of things that we've identified has grown to over 750.

And it grows every week. Every week I hear about one that I didn't know about. How are you finding them all? So this has become an incredible process of discovery in terms of how we get a hold of the print copies. A lot of times what happened is that when a prison newspaper was printed, it might have gotten sort of shuffled in

with other government documents that were produced by the prison, which is kind of strange in and of itself. And so sometimes those paper copies ended up in like a state library or a state archive. So I've been really fortunate to work with a lot of archivists in those kinds of places. And they've been wonderful about loaning us the few copies that they do have. And sometimes the libraries don't even know they have them. I had one institution where I contacted the University of Kentucky and they knew that they had some, but then the wonderful person doing the scanning, you know, like the collecting of them and actually putting the physical papers on the scanner to send the digital files to us, she went down to the shelf and she looked

where she thought the ones they had were, and she found like two others that there were no records of in their catalog. They were just sitting there. So it's like this wonderful process of complete discovery. I mean, it was interesting. There really isn't much written about them. We were expecting to find a lot more about the history of these prison newspapers when we started working on this. Right. And I really feel like the fact that these newspapers aren't online is sort of a barrier to people studying this history. And so now that we've made this archive, like people will really be able to look closely over the decades about what the history of them is. And it's going to help the lives that were there inside prison continue to be visible over the centuries.

So now anyone can go online and read the Nash News. Absolutely. I love being able to see it free, out in the world for anyone to look at. In the fall of 2022, Anne Ray invited Brian Scott, the co-founder of the Nash News, to join the project.

You know, during my incarceration, and this happens to everybody who does any amount of time, you get the sense that nobody out here really does care. I mean, you have your family, you have, you know, close-knit friends, but beyond that, as far as the general public, you know, you just don't think there's much understanding, a lot of ignorance. And so it's easy to think that, you know, nobody cares.

And seeing this collection all put in one place was such a powerful and moving moment for me. Because it shows that people do care and that they are interested. We couldn't have possibly imagined that someday somebody in, you know, Indonesia could pull up a copy of the national news. That would have... That is a thrill. We'll be right back. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average U.S. company deploys more than 100 apps

and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate and plan for the future?

In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you, and what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. In 1935, a woman named Isabella Kellock Coulter conducted what's thought to be the first study of prison newspapers in the United States

for her graduate thesis at Boston University. She found that there were at least 100 coming out of about half of the country's prisons. The number reached 250 in 1959. There were so many prison newspapers that they had their own awards, the Penal Press Awards, sometimes referred to as the Pulitzers of prison journalism, with as many as a thousand entries a year. And people outside of prison were reading along. But then, in 1971, President Nixon announced his so-called War on Drugs, along with a tough-on-crime policy agenda.

The prison population began to grow quickly. Prisons were overcrowded, there were budget issues, lockdowns became more common, and prison policies were less focused on rehabilitation and more focused on punishment. Prison newspapers started to disappear. Rutgers professor H. Bruce Franklin wrote in his book Prison Writing in 20th Century America, that the shuttering of prison newspapers was to keep the American people in the dark about the American prison. By 1998, there were only six prison newspapers left. But today, according to the Prison Journalism Project's count of 26, they're slowly coming back.

I wish that more prisons had an opportunity to do this. I think when we are given leeway and we have the trust of the administration, we can show them what we can do. Phil Smith, editor of the Nash News. What's your favorite part of the whole process? Is it that initial meeting when you're all sitting around looking at ideas, saying, okay, this could make it? Or is it looking at that final proof, you know, before it goes to print? What stage do you like the most? I like talking to my guys.

I like the camaraderie. I like being able to sit in a room. We don't have to be thugs in that room. We don't have to be this. We don't have to be that. We can be ourselves. We accept each other for who we are. And we talk. We're open. We explain, honestly, everything to the minutest detail. I love seeing when, you know, a writer named Cadell Kivett talks to us about education and how difficult it'll be for Pell Grants and how he wants to write an article so he can explain that and to see him light up when some other time he might just be sitting back listening. I like seeing that excitement. The process for me, I think, is just work. Right. Writing is work. It's introspective art, of course, but it's still work. I like building a community. Kedal Kivett is writing about Pell Grants. His piece hasn't come out yet. Federal Pell Grants, which help people pay for college, had been available to people in prison until 1994, when they were taken away. In 2015, the Obama administration began to restore Pell Grants to people in prison with what's called the Second Chance Pell Experiment.

It's been gradually expanding. Kadel Kivet hopes to use a Pell Grant to go back to school this summer. He plans to study journalism. Today, Phil Smith works as a dorm janitor. He wrote in an email, I sweep and mop the upper mezzanine of my housing dorm for 40 cents a day. I don't make enough money to buy a stick of deodorant, but it gives me plenty of time to write.

Do you think about if your life had gone differently, do you think that you would have been drawn to journalism? I thought about this one with my mother the other day. I've always been drawn to writing. I've always written poetry. Journalism, not really. I thought I wanted to write books. I wanted to write screenplays. When I was in the world, I went to college just for two semesters, but that was going to be my major. I wanted to be a screenwriter. So I don't think I would have been a journalist. But then again, hindsight is 20 20. you just don't know circumstances led me to prison i am who i am now and i just accept it for what it is there was a time in my life like when i thought i was stupid people when i tell people that they're like man there's no way

there really was i thought that i had some type of learning deficiency and forcing myself to sit down with a Jack Hart book on journalism and try to figure out, all right, what is a lead? All right, why is this in this inverted triangle? What does this diagram mean? And really digging in and trying to figure it out made me realize how intelligent I am. So that journey helps me to help others. And I hope that when I teach them or when I ask them to write an assignment, that they see the same things that I see. Although I can't guarantee that they can, that's also one of my hopes.

How do you feel about the way that journalists outside of this population, who are not incarcerated, write about incarceration? I think journalists have good intentions, but there are two spectrums to that, I think. You have the spectrum which is combative to the criminal justice system. And then you have the spectrum which is, I would say, more aligned with the prisoners, right? Of course, they have the same interests to a degree, but the way that they write about it is different. So I've encountered a lot of journalists who write about the prison system. You have abolitionists and you have prison advocates. The abolitionists are a little more hard line. We hate prison.

We want all prisons dead. Get rid of long-term segregation, all of that. The other side is more, okay, we understand that you have to have prisons, but could you do it this way? Could you reform it this way? Could you reform it this way? So in 2020, a friend of mine, we wrote a legislative proposal that was picked up by the General Assembly. It's been sponsored twice, and it's currently sponsored right now. It's called the Prison Resources Repurposing Act. And what it would do if passed is it would open parole

to people serving life without parole after 20 years. But the difference is it wouldn't be, you know, a gate opener for everyone. Number one, you would have to be chosen by the parole commission, and then you'd have to go through a lot. You'd have to complete education, vocation, and a work history.

It would take 20 years. So we designed that as a lot. You'd have to complete education, vocation, and a work history. It would take 20 years. So we designed that as a compromise. We wrote the proposal, in a sense, as an article. It was published in the North Carolina Law Review. And that was one of the first things that the editor told me when she read it. She was like, this is like reading an article. That's our background. In their piece for the North Carolina Law Review, Phil Smith and Timothy Wayne Johnson write that their proposal would reduce violence in North Carolina prisons by instilling hope within the system's residents with the fewest reasons for hope, people serving life without parole. You know, I don't really have a stance on abolition or advocacy. I think that people

should get a second chance. And I know a lot of prison advocates who identify problems, but they don't offer solutions to the problems. And I think that would be the equivalent of going to the doctor and the doctor saying, man, you got cancer. All right, well, what do we do? I don't know. I'm just here to tell you, you got cancer. You right, well, what do we do? I don't know. I'm just here to tell you you got cancer. You want a solution. You want to figure it out. So I think as an incarcerated journalist, we're in a position to do that.

That doesn't mean they have to listen to us. Psychological Services Coordinator Charlotte Walco says that somehow people all over the country are hearing about the Nash News. I get letters all the time from people out of state from and their inmates sending me requests for the Nash News and so they're getting them somehow you know I mean like Illinois and California and I keep them because I think that that's, you know, a tribute. What do you think the Nash News means for people serving life without the opportunity of parole?

That's a tough one. I think it's interesting because there are those guys who focus on the fact that they have life without parole. In my office, for instance, in a session. But the majority of them don't focus on that. They talk about, you know, this is where they are right now and they're living for the day. I think one of the sayings, Philip, help me, is do your time, don't let your time do you. And I think that's a hard concept for them to grasp. But if you talk to somebody who's been in prison for 35 years, they help those younger guys who are just coming in and don't know how to do time.

You know, they want them to get involved in things. We actually have a program that they're trying to start at this point. It's going to be like a mentorship of guys who've been in a really long time where they are going to have a very structured class-type program for younger guys who don't have a clue. And what about this, you know, an idea of just having an outlet for speaking, for communicating, you know, whether the distribution rate is 1,000 or 50,000, it's an ability for someone, a container for their words to be expressed. Absolutely. branched out and talked about more educational and controversial topics, because it just, I think more people read it at this point, because it used to be so just kind of routine,

and now we definitely have, for instance, Lawrence Prophet. He does a piece called The Rub, and he really pushes it. Is that kind of an editorial column or? Commentary. A commentary. So he would be commenting on something he's seeing in the prison or? Usually. I think his next one is, and I don't know if it's going to fly or not, but the next one that he's working on has to do with, first we were called prisoners, then we were called convicts, then we were called inmates, then we were called offenders. And a lot of guys don't like the new label, but they probably have had difficulty all along. Because if you have somebody who's been in here a really long time, they'll say, I'm a convict.

He likes to debate, would you say, Phil? Push the envelope. He does. In November of last year, Phil Smith wrote about his experience as the editor of a prison newspaper, and he made the point that for him, all of his research and all of his bylines aren't to prepare him for what happens when he gets out,

because, as he writes, I will likely never leave. He's been in prison since he was 23. Today, he's 45. Life without parole, I mean, just in my personal opinion, is a death sentence. I don't think there's much difference between that and the death penalty. However, if you dwell on that, then you will always stay in the bottoms. I want to rise above. So I don't let something that happened in my past define me. I'm defining my future every day. I know a lot of people that dwell on their incarceration.

They don't realize that they can thrive while they're still in prison. I don't want to be in prison. I hate being here every day, but I can survive. I can learn. I can grow. I have that opportunity. The one thing we have to do is realize it. And I think anybody, not just in prison, I mean, in the world, you guys have all kinds of distractions. It's very difficult to know who you are as a person. You have to sit down and really figure out who you are. Sometimes you figure it out in a marriage. Sometimes you figure it out at a job. For me, it was sitting in a cell and being very unhappy with myself and my actions and trying to decide who I want to be. And writing preserved me. Writing helped me become who I am.

And so I try to pass that on to other people. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, Sam Kim, and Megan Kinane. Our technical director is Rob Byers, engineering by Russ

Henry. Special thanks to Monica Campbell and the Prison Journalism Project. We've got a link in the show notes to Reveal Digital's American Prison Newspapers project, and also to Fresh Air, where you can hear more from Anglite editor Wilbert Rideau. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal.

You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Botox Cosmetic, adipotulinum toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults.

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