Rev Left Radio - Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Matthew Vernon Whalan joins the show to discuss Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison, an interview-driven, investigative journalistic, and collectively narrated portrait of life inside Bullock Correctional Facility in Alabama. Through the words of incarcerated people themselves, we explore the everyday realities that rarely make it into public view: mental health crisis and predation, sewage and infrastructure collapse, cruel and unusual punishment, sleep deprivation, violence, drugs and overdose, and the informal social orders that take shape when official protection fails. This book is truly an act of witness -- and a demand that we look directly at what incarceration actually does to human beings. Once examined, we can see the U.S. prison system as a disturbing microcosm of the pathologies infecting and eating away at the broader American society.  Support Matthew and his work directly on Venmo @Matthew-Whalan-1 Get 15% off any book at Left Wing Books HERE Check out our previous episode with Project Hope t0 Abolish the Death Penalty HERE   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow RLR on IG HERE Learn more about Rev Left HERE

There's a certain kind of silence in Alabama's prisons. It isn't peace, it's resignation. It's the dull, endless quiet of men waiting for someone to care. For decades, no one has. Not in the ways that matter. Matthew Wallin's book is a rebuke of that silence into the system that has sustained it. Reading this book, I'm reminded of something

that every journalist who's ever covered Alabama's broken prisons learns fast. Time stands still in these places. Yes, the numbers get worse. The buildings crumble further, the drugs flow faster, the violence climbs higher, but the core problem is unchanged. Alabama continues to cage people in conditions the courts once called cruel and unusual, and still would if they'd take another honest look.

Wallen doesn't write in abstractions. He's tracing a very real, very bloody line from the courtroom orders of the 1970s to the body count were now seeing. The problems the courts identified back then, over. crowding, lack of classification, rampant violence, indifference to mental illness, are not just present today. They're metastasized. Wallen examines the everyday living conditions of those ensnared in these inhumane conditions, lending a voice to those who have been silenced. He is not pretending to present a finished analysis or explanation of how these tragic realities are tied to so many others, which they

most certainly are. Rather, this is a tightly focused and collectively narrated. using the words of the prisoners themselves, case study and neglect and dehumanization. At the same time, it must be said, it is impossible to talk about the criminal justice system in Alabama without recognizing racial disparities in every aspect, from the makeup of the state's elected leaders and courthouses to its overpopulated jails and prisons.

Black Alabamans were over four times as likely as white Alabamans to be arrested for marijuana possession, even though the two groups use marijuana at russian, roughly the same rate. In seven Alabama jurisdictions, the arrest disparity was more than 10 to 1. Alabama's population is a little over a quarter black, but more than half the people in our jails and prisons are black. In May 2025, black Alabamans comprised 54% of the state's prison population, and the racial disparity continues in the state's parole statistics. Between January 1st, 2021 and July 31st, 2021, the Alabama Board of Partons and Parole's denied parole for 77% of parole eligible white

applicants, but denied parole for 90% of black applicants. Perhaps it's little surprised that, given those stark racial disparities, things are much the same among the state's decision makers. No black person holds an elected statewide office in Alabama. White judges account for 154 of 192 elected circuit and district judges statewide, or 80% despite whites making up 61% of the state's population. Of the 38 black judges statewide, 22 are in Jefferson County, leaving just 16 black judges across the remaining 61 counties. All judges on the Alabama Supreme Court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, the Court of Civil Appeals, and the director of the Alabama Office of Courts are white. Just three of Alabama's 41 judicial circuits are served by black district attorneys and 15.

55 of 67 Alabama sheriffs are white. All judges on the Alabama Supreme Court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, the Court of Civil Appeals, and the director of the Alabama Office of Courts are white. The result is that, like other U.S. states, black people are disproportionately likely to be incarcerated in Alabama. While black people make up 26% of Alabama's resident population, black Alabamans constitute just over twice that proportion, 53% of those incarcerated in its prisons. If this discrepancy appears less stark than that of many other U.S. states, this must be seen as a perverse result of the fact that Alabama, like many other southern states, incarcerates a significantly higher proportion of its population. According to the prison policy initiative, almost 1% of Alabama's population are held in some kind of incarceration, be it jail or prison. I've reported on Alabama's prison system for years, and what I've seen, what Wayland lays out clearly in this book, is not a broken system. It's a system working as it was designed, a system built to discard lives.

Alabama's prisons have always been about punishment, not rehabilitation or redemption. Wallen listened to these men who live in these horrors, and his book demands a reckoning. It forces readers to confront the shameful truth, that Alabama has had every opportunity to change and has chosen time and again not to. That we are closing the books on preventable deaths, hundreds of them each year, and call it. that justice. Matthew Vernon Wallen is doing what far too few have dared to do, drawing the through line between what was and what is. He reminds us that history, especially here, is not past. It is prologue. It is policy. And it is people, incarcerated people and the communities they come from who pay the price. Read this book,

then ask yourself, why we let this happen again. That is the foreword to this book written by Eddie Berkhalter from the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice Piedmont, Alabama, written in June 2025. That foreword really sets up the rest of the book, and the rest of the book, is Bullock Chronicles of Deprivation and Despaired in American Prison. And the author of that book, Matthew Wallen, is who we are interviewing today. It's a really important book. We talk about the conditions of prisons in Alabama, the horrific food that. they are served, the horrific conditions in which they're forced to live, the total lack of

mental health care, physical care, all of the parasitic classes profiting off the anti-human conditions inside these prisons, the utter and total corruption, the racial and class dynamics, and so much more. And I really hope people not only listen to this interview, but read this book and also watch a documentary that recently came out that we talk about in this episode called Alabama Solution. It's an HBO documentary that does the documentarian approach, a visual approach to conditions in Alabama prisons. And reading this book, watching that documentary,

it will really fill out the picture in your head of what exactly we're dealing with and why those of us involved in a liberated society or the creation of the possibility of a liberated society have to take prisons in the brutal American carcoral system as a genuine sight of struggle. This book is put out by our friends, Khrs Blabledeb, and they have an offshoot where they sell books called Left Wing Books.

We are in partnership with them. They are offering Rev. Left listeners 15% off any book in their store, and I will put the link to that in the show notes. So if you want to continue to educate yourself, Rev. Left listeners in particular get 15% off all books in their store. Support the small left-wing publisher who puts out really important work like this and get a cheaper book in the meantime as well. Lastly and importantly, I wanted to say that I included the author who I'm interviewing

today's Venmo in the show notes. I'm not going to say too much, but he's going through a difficult time. If you appreciate his work, it would help him enormously to get actual financial support. So if anybody is so inclined and has the disposable income and wants to do a kind and generous Act, please send our author and our interviewee some support. It would mean the world to him, and I know it would mean the world to me as well. All right, without further ado, here's my discussion with Matthew Wallen on his new book, Bullock Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in American Prisons. My name is Matthew Vernon Whalen. I'm a writer and oral historian who covers prisons primarily in

Alabama. Welcome to the show, Matthew. It's an honor to have to have to be a writer. It's a you on. Today we're going to be talking about your your newest book, Bullock Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American prison. It came out, I believe, in August of 2025. Obviously, just by pure statistical likelihood, most of our audience will not have read the book. So for listeners who haven't read the book or got around to reading it quite yet, what is Bullock about, like in the simplest terms? And why did you feel it needed to be, to be written now? Yeah, Bullock is about a prison, it's the same name as the book, Bullock Prison in Union Springs, Alabama, which was designed to hold 919 prisoners and currently holds around over 1,500.

The book chronicles about six months in Bullock as the heating and plumbing systems breakdown and the conditions in the kitchen also deteriorate. And it covers the lives and the deterioration of the prisoners, the lives of the prisoners and the deterioration of the living conditions in the prison and the sort of tension over the winter, an unusually cold winter in which the heat is not being fixed. The tension amongst the prisoners sort of considering the question of whether or not to rebel in some conditions.

capacity. I'm curious as to why you chose this prison in particular. Certainly, prisons throughout the United States are horrific. We've covered many instances that we've even interviewed someone from prison themselves talking about the horrific conditions across the country. Why did you choose a bollock in particular? And how did you get involved in the Alabama prison situation in particular? Yeah. Well, so I'll take the first question first, I guess. I, I chose Bullock for a couple reasons, I guess. One reason is that it's sort of not unique. It's a huge overcrowded prison, lots of violence, lots of drug issues.

And so I chose it because it's sort of illustrative of what goes on there, not because it's an anomaly. I had never covered Block before. my understanding from some local journalists in the area is that it's been uniquely hard to get sources in Bullock over time. And so I guess I took that on as a sort of challenge and tried to get as many of them as possible. And once I started writing the stories, I realized that they sort of flowed together very well. And they covered this one timeline with sort of an arc. And so I started putting it together as a book.

How does the investigation into the prison system fit in with like your broader sort of canon of work or what your activity has been before you wrote this book? Well, I've been covering prison issues on and off for about 15 years. I've done some oral history work on homelessness and things like that. But I started out at a young age covering a death penalty case, and I just continued to follow and write about that case for years. And then in my, I don't know, late teens, early 20s, I started to branch out more into writing about the prison issues more broadly and getting in touch with more prisoners and families and people in, more prisons. And so it's just Alabama is, you know, happens to be where I started and happens to be a place where the problem has always been bad and has been growing worse, particularly in the last couple of decades, right around the time I happened to cross it.

So, yeah, I've been doing it for a long time and I focus pretty narrowly at this point on living conditions, some exceptions. Yeah, I mean, I think that, the structure of the book is very is like journalistic and it's set up and it's thrust but it has these extended sort of first person interview testimonies that really not only sort of bring to light the conditions of the prison but also really humanize the people within them and you know that's a that's a perpetual fight around this issue in the american context and probably beyond it which is that there is very little sympathy among you know just average americans for prisoners as such right they kind of have a shorthand sort of version in their head where, well, they did a crime. Why should we care?

Taxpayer money shouldn't go to making their lives nice or comfortable in the first place. And it just sort of stops there, which I think is, I mean, horrific and detrimental in so many different ways. And there's this brutal, I always like to bring up this brutal class dynamic when it comes to who goes to prison and who doesn't. I mean, look at the people leading our country right now, open criminals, murdering children, engaged in genocide, bombing oil, depots in Iran as we speak, you know, putting toxic clouds of smoke in a city of 10 million people. Epstein Island stuff. Like these people never even face investigations, let alone charges or convictions or serve any jail time. So, I mean, just can you speak a little bit about that difficulty in overcoming that sort of mental lump in people's minds about prisoners bad, therefore, why should we care?

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think there are all sorts of reasons for, I mean, like, this is something. I have to think about a lot because I'm writing you know I'm a I'm a leftist writer from the north writing about Alabama I have you know a small publisher with a with a funny name and and I and I want to do everything I can to make sure that people in Alabama can read my book and and learn something from it and not feel like there's something being jammed down their throat because I do think I do think there must be I mean first of all there's some like I think just sort of objective non ideological reasons to care about how bad the prison system are the prison system is even if you you know hate all the prisoners and think that are getting everything

they deserve one is like a public health reason you know having super overcrowded unsanitary prisons does pose public health risks to the free world, especially in something like a pandemic event like we experienced a few years ago. People are coming and going back to the communities they live in. And even before the pandemic, there have been outbreaks of, you know, things like scabies and, you know, there was even a SARS outbreak in the early 2000s. There's been HIV famously, you know, spread through prison. into the free world. So that's one thing is like this could impact you even if you don't care about prisoners. The other thing is that, and this is the more political thing, the more ideological thing, like my appeal to like even sort of like tough on crime conservatives in Alabama is like, okay, so I can understand if your politics say that, you know, you, don't like the prisoners and you think they're getting whatever they deserve.

Like, does that mean that you support officers dealing drugs in the prison? Is that okay? Because, like, that's going on. If you're tough on crime conservative, like, how can you be okay with a massive drug dealing operation? You know, maybe you don't believe in rehabilitation, but are you okay with people being raped in prison? you know, are you okay with people being so understaffed and overworked that, like, police officers are falling asleep on the job? I mean, so I do think there is a potential appeal to people who maybe don't share my politics.

I'm not saying it's widespread. I'm sure lots of people just are okay with those things, sadly. But I do think there must be a slice of, you know, people who are consistent about. their politics, but whose politics are very different from mine who can be appealed to. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, from our perspective, once you have a structural analysis of crime and a class analysis of American life and American prisons and how that intersects with the judicial system, like, you just have a very low, like, sort of belief in the system functioning in any meaningfully just way in the first place. And then also, I think

there is something to be said about a society's prisons being a sort of reflection in some distorted black mirror way of the society at large. And I think in American prisons we find that. We find hardcore corruption. We find hardcore violence, you know, deep racism and classism. And those things shouldn't surprise us, but they should be confronted as part of a confrontation with the broader system that produces not only those results, but all these other results throughout the rest of society. So it's an interesting thing, and I really applaud you for doing this work, and this is something that we should care about.

We have to care about. And I think that will become clear as we go through this. And I think your humanizing interviews do a lot of heavy emotional lifting when it comes to not seeing this in kind of a, you know, overly abstract way or just, you know, prisons, systems, people commit crimes, go away, but actually bringing the human element. human element forth, which is really good. So before we move into kind of the stuff in the book itself, I just wanted to give you a chance to maybe talk a little bit about how,

if you want to, how you gathered the material for the book, kind of how the book is structured chapter to chapter, because I think that's interesting. And any other thoughts you had on the construction of the book itself before we get into the substance. Yeah, so the book is all interview-based. I just speak with as many prisoners as I can in the prison. And, you know, like I said earlier, and there's some exceptions to this.

It's not all, I don't think, it's actually not all in the exact order I wrote it or did the interviews. There are a couple differences in the, you know, chronology. But for the most part, it's serialized. And so it's just, it's primarily interview based and also did as much, you know, I just did a ton of reading and research. And so, and like I said, it covers the, it covers an unusually cold winter. And as the plumbing system breaks down, which causes a lot of flooding and the heat, the heating system is broken down and goes unrepaired for the entirety of the season. And so, yeah, I, you know, there were these questions, there were these problems ongoing

throughout the book and a constant question of like whether anything would be done about them and I won't spoil how the book ends but you know there is sort of you know one of those issues does get addressed towards the end but in a kind of unsatisfying way let's say and so yeah I essentially you know it's a it's a chronicle of this winter essentially starting right before and ending and just after the winter. That story of that season seemed to be a good way to talk about a lot of the issues that come up in Alabama prisons by just interviewing as many people as I could in this one place.

Yeah, yeah, and the chapters themselves are pretty, are thematic, right? Every chapter kind of focuses in on a specific issue, and so when you take the book as a whole, you get this sort of tour to force of conditions inside this prison anchored by the first person testimony in the interviews. themselves, but you also fill it out with like this reporting in this journalistic context, court history, media reporting policy, which really kind of fills out the picture. It's not just interviews in that sense. And I think the book is made all the better for it. But let's kind of, let's move into the prison itself and kind of paint a basic picture. I know you've already said

some things and people that have any, you know, notion of American prisons will have some vision in their mind about what conditions are actually like. But, but kind of from a bird's eye view, what kind of facility is Bullock? What is daily life there like? And what are some of the first conditions that a new reader kind of needs to understand to orient themselves to the book? Yeah. I mean, Bullock, so Bullock was opened in 1987. It was originally intended to be a mental health facility. It was opened in a wave of new prisons opened after. a decade of litigation in which there was an attempt to reform the Alabama prison prison system through the federal courts, which Alabama lost but refused to cooperate on and it just

fizzled out and they never actually ended up cooperating with these 13 court orders that were laid out in that case. So Bullock was originally designed to be a mental health facility. And my understanding is there's one building there called the Blue Building, which does deal with primarily with mental health issues. But Alabama's prisons are so overcrowded that there's no real classification system. So it's sort of just like any other prison. There's lots of prisoners in there who are not by their own account. And also, sometimes by their classification, they're not dealing with mental health issues and are not on the mental health caseload sometimes.

And also because it's so overcrowded, prisoners are just dealing with their mental health issues all over the state. So there's tons of mental health problems and all the prisons. And so Bullock opens at the end of the 80s when Alabama decides, this is very similar to what's happening now.

The DOJ has brought a case against Alabama for its prison conditions. Alabama has challenged it in the Supreme Court, I believe they might lose some of those cases, but refuse to cooperate again. But the point is that Alabama is the only solution Alabama ever agrees to is building more prisons. And the big problem with that is that, like, in 1981,

six years before Bullock was built, two years before St. Clair was built, others were built in those years. The Alabama Department of Corrections own projections said that they would need a new prison. This is in 1981, they said this, a new prison capable of housing 1,000 prisoners every year through 1990 and beyond in order to keep pace with the growing population of inmates. And that each of those prisons would cost roughly 30 million. dollars to build and $600 million to operate over its useful life. So the idea that they were ever going to be able to solve this problem by just building new prisons, like they knew in 1981 that

they weren't going to be able to do that. And that phrase every year through 1990 and beyond is really interesting. The words and beyond are doing a lot of work in that sentence. All of these facilities, St. Clair was meant to deal with the overcrowding, but it quickly became overcrowded. Bullock was meant to deal with mental health issues, but you have all kinds of prisoners there, and you also have all kinds of prisoners of mental health issues all over the state because of the overcrowding. And so you have all the problems that are in all the prisons, or in Bullock, rampant drug use, violence, extortion, infrastructural problems flooding uh constant flooding rats roaches a discrimination uh particularly against

gay people and so yeah i mean it's uh it's a it's a hellhole it's a disaster yeah it's it's medieval and it's barbarism it certainly rises to any reasonable standard of cruel and unusual punishment it's not unique to to bollock but certainly this is a you know a flash point in a broader failure of institutional, you know, corrections or rehabilitation facilities, which, of course, they're not. And it's really brutal to see the people's experience within them, you know, and I'm interested as well that, you know, with the racial component, the deep south, Alabama, do you have any sense of the sort of demographic makeup of Bullock in particular? I don't know the demographic makeup of Bullock in particular. I can tell you, my sources are

pretty evenly, evenly split among races. Blacks are disproportionately sentenced in Alabama. Within the prisons, I believe, I mean, they're over 50% black, but it's, but in terms of the people I interview, it's pretty, pretty mixed. Yeah. Racial tension, I don't, you know, Eddie, Eddie Burk-Alter writes about it in the forward to the book. I don't touch on it very much in the book.

For a couple reasons. I mean, at one, there's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a very, it's a very complex issue in the prisons. There are a lot of different dynamics that, that are just, there's just different from the free world in certain ways. And so I sort of feel like a whole book could be written about, I mean, whole, and, you know, it's sort of like a separate book. And, and right now, we're in a time where lots of people are writing that book. So I just don't feel like, I didn't feel like, um, I didn't feel like, um, that was the way I could be most useful in my in my reporting and I don't live there so I felt that Eddie would be better at dealing with the demographic issues. He's a great researcher for

Alabama Appleseed who just knows all the numbers like the back of his hand and and also you know because blacks are disproportionately sentenced in in the free world they are you know they're in prison they are they're sometimes the power dynamics change in a way and so you know that it's you know it's complex it's just violence across the board all over the place you know absolutely yeah well you know you mentioned mental health and early in the book you do foreground mental health i mean the whole the whole institution itself was sort of you know supposed to be a sort of mental health place and of course it gets turned into a prison. So there's an interesting dynamic running through that history about, you know, the perceived attempt to maybe address mental health and then the total brutality

that people suffering for mental, various forms of mental illness face inside those prisons. You interview Jordan, who describes, you know, what it's like to be somebody with mental health inside that prison, that mental health issues are extorted, bullied, assaulted, preyed upon, etc. Can you talk a little bit about how the environment itself affects mental health? What mental health issues you came across in your reporting and interviewing and kind of how mental health housing kind of becomes a site of intense predation rather than care inside these prisons? Yeah, I mean, you know, this strikes me all the time like when I'm interviewing guys, you know, especially in Bullock, but all over when they're talking about like, I mean, the fact that

there's even any pretense that this is a mental health facility is just silly. I mean, to place somebody in a mental health facility, I mean, it's just, I mean, we can just start with the fact that this is the kind of environment that might make any sane person crazy. So, so to have this mental health building that's just the same as all the other prisons in terms of how bad it is. It's ridiculous. I mean, how can you even know, like, when you place someone in that environment, how can you know what the cause of their mental health issues are, you know? I mean, like, a lot of guys tell me, like, a couple guys say in the book, actually, like, I feel like I have mental health problems because I'm in here, you know? And, like, how can,

how can we know if that's not true? You know, there's only one. one way to find out, which is to not place people in these environments, you know? So, yeah, I mean, it's impossible to sleep. I mean, people struggle with addiction. And like I said, the officers are, are the Department of Corrections has turned into a drug cartel. And they're the ones bringing the prisons in. I mean, I'm sure people have seen the documentary about the prisons. There's an interesting moment with the one of the prisoners this guy Raul they cover how he

the free world person who was running the addiction program left and he just left this prisoner Raul in charge of running the whole thing and there's a point where Raul is saying like there's got to be other methods

you know I can't remember his exact phrasing but like there's other ways like people like have education about that I don't don't that I don't that that that know more about uh than me that about how to help and the thing is is just like the officers are bringing the drugs in and so and then there's this prisoner who's like trying to figure out how to help people quit drugs you know you even get the idea he's entertaining like you know maybe there's like harm reduction models that might work and things like that but like

it's the officers who are bringing the drugs in and so So it's crazy to have this prisoner in there and trying to contemplate, like, what methods help people recover. It's just like, I don't know. I feel like I'm not articulating myself very well. It's all upside down. It's backwards. Like, yeah, the prisoner is trying to solve a problem that the institution should be addressing in some way, shape, or form. But they're exacerbating the issue the whole time.

Right. Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, people are being traumatized, you know, are being. being, you know, left with PTSD addiction. They can't sleep. They're in this noisy, scary environment all the time. Often they're not eating enough. And they're, you know, they can't get help.

They become suicidal. They can't get help. There are multiple accounts of officers telling people to kill themselves. There's one account in the book of other prisoners, like saving a guy's life who try to hang himself. Because there are no professionals around to help. You couldn't imagine a worse environment for a person's mental health. Yeah.

And it's hard to know. I mean, once you put somebody in an environment like this, it's just like, in my opinion, it becomes a sort of a chicken and egg question of like what's causing the mental health problems, you know? 100%. Yeah, you put somebody that is ostensibly perfectly mentally healthy inside an environment like that. there's no world in which that doesn't degrade over time. Right. Or even if they already have mental health issues.

Yeah. Like, it's not going to help. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of people listening will all have to various degrees had mental health issues, right? Most of us have experienced periods of anxiety or depression. Some of us deal with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, et cetera, OCD. And when you are in a mental health crisis, you are incredibly vulnerable.

And that vulnerability is felt through every fiber of your being. You are wracked by fear or anxiety or despair or delusion. And when us in the free world have those episodes, insofar as we can possibly do it, we sort of retreat into the safety of our home, maybe the safety of our family. We have friends that care for us. You know, maybe we stay in bed for prolonged periods of time. But we try to retreat to an area of some level of safety. And that's a very natural, human, almost animalistic thing to do.

to retreat under those conditions. But imagine having that exact issue, but being in this brutal environment, nobody gives a fuck the people that are there that are supposed to run the system and take care of things, actually look down on you, have contempt for you, mock you, a constant high level of threats all around you. Yeah, if you don't get good sleep, that in and of itself is degrading to any level of mental health. And if you're in a mental health crisis, the lack of sleep is the worst.

thing that could happen. Your body never gets to fully calm down, never gets to fully relax. These are anti-human conditions. And that's before we even talk about things like solitary confinement, which was just straight up a form of torture. And it's legally recognized internationally as such, right? Yeah. It's brutal. Yeah. Because, yeah, as I said, like, chapter by chapter, you go through these issues, and mental health is a big one, but it is just one. You also describe extreme degradation through sanitation and infrastructure failure for people who have never heard these kinds of accounts. What are some of the most representative examples of these issues? And why are those details sort of central to the book rather than incidental? Yeah, I mean, there is no

cooling system in the summer. There's no heating system in the winter. There is constant flooding. The plumbing system is constantly backed up. So often that flooding, is in the form of raw sewage, which guys are, you know, which is being tracked throughout the, throughout the prison. Prisoners are tasked with cleaning these things up themselves without help from the free world or prison staff and often without any sanitation products. So there's one pretty horrifying moment in the book where prisoners snake garbage bags over their arms to reach as far down as they can into the toilets to try to relieve some of the

pressure on the system with their hands. As I said, the heat went unrepaired. Their rats and roaches. The kitchen, my understanding is the septic tank is in Bullock was built. This very poorly working, apparently septic tank was built under the kitchen. So there's also a lot of flooding. The flooding extends to the kitchen. And also, prisoners talk about the smell. You can just smell it everywhere. And you can especially smell it when you go to the chow hall.

Like, so bad some prisoners say it makes it hard to eat. One prisoner said you can taste the smell and the food. You know, one reason I focus on these things is because, not just because of how the horrible impact it has. on daily life, but also because a lot of people assume, and sometimes I notice even prisoners I speak with, assume that these buildings are just really old. Like, they must be ancient, given the kinds of problems they're having. Actually, that's not the case. I mean, like, as I said, before, Bullock was only built in 1987. St. Clair was built in 1983. Ventriss was built in

1990. Bibb was built in 1998. So they're not, a lot of them are not particularly old buildings. I mean, I have sources, you know, I say in the book, I have sources who have been in prison longer than a lot of these buildings have existed. But they're, they're extremely poorly built and they're extremely overcapacity. And they, their problems go unrepaired, so they just get worse. and then there are even little things like in the book

I talk about a prisoners or the prisoners talk about how they only get one roll of toilet paper a week and a lot of guys run out and so these guys who have dealt with have reached into the plumbing system and pulled things out there's all kinds of

other things besides toilet paper being flushed down the toilets and no small part because if you're caught doing it you can be charged with destruction of state property. You know, people, yeah, people run out of toilet paper. They cut up sheets. They cut up clothing and other things.

And so, yeah, there's just, you know, like I said, people might think that these buildings are just really old, but they're actually really poorly built. They're being used way over capacity because they're so overcrowded. there's a lot of pressure on the system and in my opinion they're not giving people enough toilet paper yeah and that that that begs another question which is that you know all prisons have some form of funding streams there's some resource allocation that is meant to go to in theory solving such problems there's always an american society some element of profiteering going on here from your sense of of you know your investigations and interviews what is like

the the sort of economic analysis of what's going on here. Where do those resources go? Who does profit from this, et cetera? Well, there's all kinds of people who profit from it. I mean, that, you know, all sorts of companies get contracts for the constructions of these new prisons. I mean, these prisons costs, I think it's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars for these mega prisons. The, you know, the phone companies make, uh, all the, lot of money. In this case, it used to be secure as technologies. Now it's a much even worse company, which is hard to imagine, called I see Solutions. You know, there's companies that I think Roto Router was doing pest control. I was able to confirm through some prisoners, at least in

a fountain prison a while back. They might be doing it elsewhere too. A lot of these contracts are bid it on. And also it's for a cynical capitalist, it's really like a dream come true. I mean, in, I mean, this is also an interesting, like an interesting thing about like the sort of slavery aspect of what's going on is, you know, slavery in Alabama since the end of the civil war has taken many forms. You know, after the civil war, it was like convict leasing, debt bondage, sharecropping, last iteration really is chain gangs, which ends in 30s. And then after that, the forced labor up to now is really, aside from the work release program, is often focused on maintaining the facilities in which the prisoners are enslaved. And so, but there's this other kind of slavery,

I think, where they're also, they're not just captive workers. They're also like captive customers now, you know, because, you know, if you don't like I see solutions, the phone company, too bad, you can't get another, you can't get another plan, you know, that's the phone system you're going to use. You have to give money to I.C. Solutions or somebody has to give money to IC solutions on your account for you to be able to talk to people on the phone, for people be able to call you, you know, or for you, sorry, for you to be able to call people. if you don't like the pest control company that's coming in to spray in your dorm, like,

too bad. Like, they're the ones that have the contract. You don't get to complain. You don't get to shop with someone else. You know, and you have to, you have to buy these things.

Like, anyone who can have contact with family and friends on the free world is not going to just, on principle, never speak to anyone on the phone because they don't want to give money to IC solutions. that's just not realistic. So, yeah, so not only the captive workers, they're also captive customers. And then also, another question as to where the money goes, there's a great reporter named Best Shelburne,

who's recently done a series on this, and discovered that they spent something like, I think the number was like $50 million in five years just on settling lawsuits of their, staff, which is a wild number, I mean. And most of that are, you know, and a lot of that is just officers, you know, officer misconduct and abuse. Yeah, there's all kinds of people making money off of it.

There's an old, it's not that old, but there's a book from the early 2000s that I reread in the last couple years that I think is not widely read enough and is still very, relevant just called prison profiteers who makes money off mass incarceration is the anthology edited by paul right and tara harrowville which i highly recommend on that question oh thing i should say the health insurance the health care companies too they are providing the worst possible care and they're bidding on contracts in the same way i think in alabama right now i think it's yes care or something uh but they're just the worst worst. They hire doctors who are not allowed to work in the free world. Like, you know, the prison

health care company all over the country. They're just horrible, horrible parasitic entities. Even worse than the health care companies in the free world. Yeah, I was about to say. But yeah, I mean, I truly believe that the other side of organizing society around maximizing profit accumulation for a few is just this widespread disdain and indifference of and about human life, whether that's human life in Skid Row, human life in Palestine, human life in the healthcare system, human life in American prisons. It all is just this grotesque, anti-human profit before everything approach to life. And it is anti-human to its core. And it's mostly inflected in places like prisons, but it really permeates our entire society. I kind of want to like shift a little bit

to the inner life of the prisoners. Before I do though, I want to give you a chance to talk on two more things we haven't quite covered yet. You've mentioned drugs and you mentioned, you know, CEOs and these officers basically being a drug cartel, bringing in selling drugs, profiting themselves, you know, surely off the distribution of drugs in prisons. And then I'm also interested in the quality of food, right? As basic human needs, you need sleep, you need shelter, you need shelter, you need food. What is the quality of food that the prisoners have access to as well? Yeah, actually, you know, it's interesting.

Just recently, the food system was changed over. And I've gotten mixed accounts of, I've gotten mixed feedback about that. The only positive feedback through and through I got about it was from death row, which was interesting. It makes me wonder if there's something different in terms of either quantity or quantity, or quality being fed to them. But overall, the company was just changed over to, now that the name is going to slip my mind.

But the feedback I'm getting about the food system right now is that the quality of the food is slightly better, but they're being fed less of it. And some of this varies throughout prison to prison. But also it seems that in both the aftermath to the documentary on HBO, which came out like a month after my book. And then in the lead-up to this work stoppage that was announced, which never happened, through a lot of the prisons,

they were being fed twice a day instead of three times. Some prisons were getting bag launches for a period with very little in them, which is similar to what happened when they did go on strike in 20, 22, they were basically starved out. They were given bag launches with like, you know, a couple pieces of bread and some cheese. And, you know, I once was able to get the video footage from inside Fountain Prison of, on a day when they were being served sack launches during the strike, one prisoner's lunch bag just had nothing in it except a giant dead rat. and that that was one of my first substack articles when I moved everything over to substack

so yeah the food system is terrible and then again like people can get things on the you know store commissary which is just another way for these corporations to make money the food has been has been terrible for a long time and like I said in Bullock it's compounded by the smell throughout the prison, which is definitely a problem elsewhere as well due to the flooding throughout the state. But in Bullock, it seems like the septic tank was really built very close to the kitchen, which made it even worse there in the eating area. You've mentioned this documentary several times. What exactly, what documentary are you talking about so I can link to it? Oh, sure, yeah. The documentary is,

called the Alabama Solution. I should say the name of my book, too. I guess I haven't done that. I did up front, but go ahead. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, the Alabama Solution is an HBO documentary by

Andrew Jurecki and Charlotte Kaufman. Andrew Jurecki's a great filmmaker. He did this series The Jinks about Robert Durst. And Charlotte Kaufman is just a great journalist and advocate who's also been working on these,

working on the prison issues for a long time. I think she was really the main, you know, a lot of great people worked on it. Beth Shelburne worked on it as well. It seems like Charlotte Kaufman really, really was the star of that project, I think. Aside from the prisoners, of course, who carry the movie. Yeah, I would argue that if you read your book,

Bullock, which of course I'll link to in the show notes and watch that documentary, you would get a really sort of, you know, deep insight into into the issues we're talking about and hopefully be moved enough to participate in some organizing efforts around these issues, which we'll get to at the end of this interview. But I do have many more questions for you. One, I will go well. Go ahead. You sit quickly, I would say they go well together, too.

That documentary is really breathtaking. And like I said, they also, they don't have a lot about this particular prison. So, and Bullock has, I've been told it's hard to cover. So those two things, like I think they do go well, one after the other. How do you recommend individuals doing that, but also if you are in an organization of any sort, even if you're working around prison issues or not, that would be a really good, like, study, you know, group thing to do, like watch this movie together, discuss it, read this book together, discuss it.

And specifically, if you're in Alabama and you're doing any sort of organizing, this would be an essential sort of site of struggle that you might want to gear your energy toward. But you've mentioned death row before. And, you know, although capital punishment still exists in the United States, many states in particular have more or less gotten rid of it, right? And even in some of those places where it's technically still possible, like, you know, in my home state of Nebraska, it increasingly rarely occurs. What is the state of death row and capital punishment in Alabama in particular? Is it still as much as it was in the 80s and 90s? Yeah, it's very bad. It's, yeah, they're about to execute a guy. right now who is very obviously disabled

and also because Alabama is one of the only states that I shouldn't say one of the only it's one of the states that allows people to be executed even if they were not like the trigger man in a crime so he

you know this is super visibly disabled person who never killed anyone himself is about to be executed named Sonny Burton. My next book is about a guy named Jimmy Davis Jr., who's the one I started writing about when I was young and have been writing about again,

who just lost his final appeal in the 11th Circuit, and his case now goes to the Supreme Court. Yeah, I mean, it's really bad in Alabama, and like much of the system, I mean, it's really stark in the death penalty. It has propensity to, prey on poor people who can't afford to defend themselves, which in my opinion substantially raises the odds of wrapping up innocent people into the system. There's the famous line by

Stephen Bright that the death penalty is not for the worst crime, it's for the worst lawyer. So yeah, it's really bad and they're not, they have no plans to slow down. It's, it seems like a almost like a cultural fixture. Yeah, truly. But who knows? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if that will change in Alabama anytime soon, but you're right.

I mean, like nationally there has been, I mean, I worry that we're swinging back in the other direction now. But I don't think all the work has been undone. Like you said, a lot of states have abolished it. And then there's also sort of like symbolic abolition. You know, like you said about Nebraska, New Hampshire has, I think, you know, the governor comes out and gives a strong speech about how like you're not going to come into New Hampshire

without facing the harshest penalty, you know. But they have like one guy on death row and they have no death chamber so they can't execute him. Like, that's basically abolition, you know. Yeah, yeah. Man. And I, almost a year ago, actually, I interviewed Dawson Hicks, who's an organizer

for Project Hope to abolish the death penalty, which operates in and around the Alabama carceral system. So if you want to go deeper on that particular issue, I'll link to that in the show notes as well so you can listen to that interview and kind of fill out your understanding even more specifically around that issue and the brutality of carcoral punishment in this, in this God-versaken society, right? Where the worst, most evil people have the most power and wealth and we're putting to death, like, you know, disabled people and poor people. It's true. truly, truly grotesque. I want to kind of move into a little bit of like the subjectivity more, like the human aspect of it.

Because midway through the book, your book kind of shifts toward the inner life of basically survival. You mentioned constant noise, sleep deprivation. You even talk about in the book perhaps the role of prayer, religion, you know, people trying to find ways to get through these conditions. What did you learn about the psychology and spirituality of surviving Bullock day to day? Oh, that's a good question. It's, I mean, one thing I'm struck by, not just in Bullock, but around the state when I interview people is that, like, on a certain level, like, one never really seems to get used to being in these prisons. And, I mean, I don't want to speak for everyone, for anyone, really, but I guess the sense I get in general is that, like, every day it's hard. Every day you think about going home, you know, and there's.

a real like burning on ease with your situation all the time like some days it's just the same way it felt like the first day you got there even if it's been years and years.

I don't know it just seems like you're just trying to get through the through the day every just moment to moment I mean faith plays a huge role for pretty much all of my sources that might also be, you know, somewhat of a regional thing.

You know, there's also just a lot of more religious people in the free world down there. And, but also it's, you know, it's real, it's, it's real, you know, it's not, it's not new agee or self-help. It's serious, you know, and it's thought out. And these guys, you know, relentlessly read the Bible, a lot of them. And even many who don't, they attend, you know, prayer groups and they talk about it all the time, you know. So in my opinion, it's a very sophisticated kind of spirituality that I myself wish I serious enough to attain. But friendship is often important or at least like camaraderie, you know. sometimes there and it's you know some occasionally i've interviewed people in romantic relationships

as well that are healthy um yeah i don't know i don't know if i have a super interesting answer about that i mean i think a lot of i kind of just feel like what are they going to do you know i mean uh you can't uh you know i mean some do but for the most part people are not just going to off them and so they just they just keep living you know and uh you know then there is also again there's the there's this constant tension throughout my book about whether or not to resist at a certain point you know there's always wrestling with this question about like at what point has has this or that problem gone so far for so long and gotten so bad that we finally need to do something about it and and sometimes they do, you know, sometimes they do resist.

And so, you know, I don't know if that's a question of survival because, you know, they know what risks they're taking when they take an action like that. And so they maybe even, at that point it's just about like, sometimes I think it's just about principle at that point. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I don't know how they do it. I mean, life is hard to get used to in the free worlds, you know. I can't imagine. But yeah, I mean, they also, they preoccupy themselves, you know.

They have, they make things, you know. Some of them become artists with whatever resources they have. One of them does, you know, these interesting soap carvings. Some people draw. They, you know, at one point, I don't know if I put this in the book, but at one point they set up, I think they used, like, Maybe they used, like, they had these big styrofoam cups or something. And so they, they, like, everybody pulled a bunch of socks together.

And they stuffed everyone's socks into one sock. And they made, like, a bowling ball and, like, a sock bowling ball. And they had these, like, styrofoam cups for pins and they went bowling in prison. They make these insane meals because all the food sucks. So they get really creative with. you know making different kinds of pizzas and burritos and you know sometimes it sounds like it ends up actually tasting good but i i think a bigger part of it is just that there's like uh some element of of fun to it you know yeah in some ways there's a lot of answers to that question in some ways

like i don't know if there's any answer to that question or if they're just they're just going through the days, you know, what choice do they have? Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to analyze, you know, the human spirit in conditions of basically total degradation, but also total domination. Like, you know, you are completely locked in. You are at the mercy of this brutal system that really doesn't care about you at all. And still, there's a humanity there, right?

They're still cooking. There's still games. There's creation. There's resistance. There's religion. and just the idea of kind of preserving an inner life in that environment. Like we all kind of take for granted that we do have this sort of inner life, you know, that we consume ourselves with most of the day, this sort of way of relating to ourselves and our own lives inwardly.

And it's just very difficult to think about what that would look like in the context of this prison. But, you know, love and friendship and continuing to make human bonds and doing the most human things possible, is creating, whether that's a fucking burrito or that is like soap art or whatever or a new game by putting your socks together to make a bowling ball. This human urge to create and come together is a beautiful thing. And it's even made all the more beautiful in conditions as brutal as these. But again, that's no excuse for the conditions themselves, right? Humans should be liberated from these conditions. No human being on earth should live in conditions, even approaching these.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it really like, I mean, in a way, it does, it does say something about just how much we naturally value our lives, you know, I mean, how much we want to be alive. I mean, it's amazing to me that more of them don't kill themselves, you know? in that way that by the fact that more of them don't is all by itself a little bit inspiring right like it leaves one with this feeling of like no matter how bad life gets maybe like you know someday you're going to die anyways someday

so there's no point in no point in killing yourself yeah yeah absolutely life is already short enough it's going to take care of itself may as well, may as well go bowling, you know? Absolutely. Well, I'm actually interested, too, as a kind of a side question is, like, all these

interviews in the book, do you have a particular interview that they're all valuable, but do you have a particular interview that, like, sticks with you that stands out to you, that is, that you've carried beyond the book itself? I mean, there's so many, there's so many for different reasons, you know, I mean, you know, I think the first chapter opens with a guy. One thing I think is really strong about the first chapter is it opens with a guy basically who's in there for all nonviolent charges. It's been in for like over 20 years.

And a lot of the chapter is just him describing all these problems, health problems he has that he didn't have before prison, you know? And I think that that is a strong setup. Then now, it's something I always think about now when I'm interviewing people, like, what kind of damage has been done, you know, since you've been in there. And then, like, I've interviewed a lot of guys who, I interviewed a lot of guys who were in for nonviolent crimes, never committed an act of violence before prison, got to prison and committed an act of violence. I also interviewed a lot of guys who were in there for violent crimes and never did drugs before prison,

then went to prison and started doing drugs, you know. The opposite of rehabilitation. Right, exactly, yeah. Like failure at every level. So, and, you know, I don't want to spoil it, but I think the interview that stuck with me, I mean, also the interview of the guys' Christmas week, like trying to unclog the sewage system with their hands, obviously,

that stuck with me. there's some that are just really disturbing that stick with me for that reason, which, you know, people can read for themselves. But the one that stuck with me, I think, I guess, in sort of a sentimental way, is at the end, you know, with just certain changes happening in the prison as the book is coming to a close. and as this reporting had been serialized, a lot of it. And I'm just having a conversation with the prisoners about, like, essentially how we're going to deal with that going forward, you know, to stay in touch and keep doing interviews, you know, in the event that any of them are transferred or anything like that.

That was a really moving moment. and, you know, I think it was the closest I could come to not having this particular kind of book end in just a really depressing note, you know. I don't know. It was just, I was glad I was able to end this extremely dark book with kind of a sweet moment, you know. Yeah. Yeah, a hard thing to do for sure. And, you know, near the end, you do talk about, you center a sort of trans person's experience.

And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that interview in particular. Yeah, sure. I mean, I should say that for the most part, there's some exceptions to this. For the most part, I don't really seek out any particular kind of prisoner. I just talk to whoever wants to talk to me. And so, yeah, she is, she's a really, interesting smart person she is in Bullock

she had been involved in a uprising in Holman prison in 2016 which was a pretty big deal the warden got stabbed it was and then on the back end of that sometime later parts of Holman were shut down

but anyways yes she is she was in Bullock she was in a relationship with another prisoner who's also in the book and I'm sad to say

they've actually been separated since the book was published. They are in different facilities now. And yeah, so, and she like, also like, much like you know, a, there's another prisoner I interview in the book who's gay

and then there's also another prisoner in the book I interview who is straight, but is labeled as gay because he has HIV and everyone found out. And that is, there's, you know, rampant discrimination against, um, against gay and against trans people. Uh, in the prison, they are, you know, they're, uh, they're not allowed in certain areas. They're not allowed to like, uh, you know, trade things in ways that other prisoners do.

They're not allowed in the, the ice chest. And they're often, you know, I mean, this is true of all the prisoners, but I think, you know, disproportionately they are assaulted by other prisoners quite a lot. Physically and sexually? Physically and sexually, yeah. And there's sometimes, like, you know, there's an account of this in the book, which is pretty disturbing of, you know, people get, like, essentially kidnapped within the prison by other prisoners. they call it getting claimed. And often the only way out of that is to find another prisoner who will protect you from whoever

has claimed you, but then you often owe that prisoner the same thing. So people are like claimed and traded essentially or claimed and stolen or, you know, there are all types of decisions. discrimination that gay people and trans people in particular face. And there's also certain types of violence that all the prisoners face. But, you know, that certainly seems to happen more to gay and trans people. Yeah. And she actually, if I remember correctly, like got into adult prison basically as a teenager.

So most of her entire adult life, even her adolescent life, is defamation. is defined by her prison experiences. And one thing that she talks about and kind of comes up in the book, again, is like the forms of social organization. So if you're in this environment that we all know is high threat levels at every single level, obviously human beings will form forms of social organization for protection. Sometimes that often takes the form of straight up gangs. And she talks about being affiliated with the bloods when she came in. Can you talk a little bit about the various forms of social organizations,

specifically around like power and protection that humans in prison seek out in the form of gangs or other forms of social organization, kind of how people organize themselves along those lines for protection? Yeah. I mean, there are certainly lots of people join gangs for protection. Sometimes there's also like regional state affiliations like Birmingham. People stick together in certain camps and, you know, people from other places, similar thing. and so, but yeah, it's not something I get super into in the book, but I have interviewed people in the past, both.

I mean, I'm not sure in her case if she was already affiliated with the Bloods. I can't remember. She might have said, or if she became affiliated in prison. But, yeah, I mean, it does offer some protection. And it also offers some, and people also join the, you know, like the Southern Brotherhood gangs for protection. as well at times. And it does offer some protection.

It also, you know, it also leads to tension and conflict. And, you know, there's a phrase called cludging, which basically if two prisoners get into a fight, like another group,

like a group who's on the side of one of them will, we'll jump in and just like, you know, they'll all like beat up. this one person together. And I think that like a lot of that kind of fighting comes from, you know, like gang affiliation. So it's not, yeah, it's not something I focus on a whole lot. I mean, I think there are situations where people get involved in that for, for protection.

I'm sure there are some situations even in the free world where people get involved in that life for protection. Yeah. In some form or another. you know sometimes i don't know how like much of a choice people really feel like they have you know in her case she was so young that i yeah i don't know i i i figure you know a path was presented to her at an impressionable age in this environment um and yeah that's what happened but but yeah it's not it's not something i'm very much of an expert about for sure yeah and i I would just argue that there's a reason that gangs exist across all cultures in areas of deprivation, right?

Where there is poverty, where there is a miseration, where there's a lack of opportunities. Gangs of all sorts tend to emerge as a form of social organization in conditions of extremists. And so that's no surprise that those also exist within prison. Yeah. And to answer your question, too, not just with gangs, but like it is really, the prisoners because there's no real staff presence who are enforcing order. And so sometimes that's in the form of like I said earlier, like, you know, wrestling with the question of whether to organize in some way. Sometimes it's like, you know, one prisoner in the book like hands out a bunch of

complaint forms and or like I mentioned earlier, like there are prisoners who run certain programs. I talk in the book about how there are what they call dorm reps in Alabama prisons. One prisoner is sort of the point person representative of the dorm and often kind of a middle person between prison staff and prisoners. There's some question about the legality of that because some of those court order, one of the court orders that I was talking about earlier from the 80s federal court order was that, Alabama's not that you can't have prisoners in positions of authority over other prisoners So like what Alabama does like I would say really flirting with that you know

Not that it matters because they won't be held accountable probably but right But that you know you could make an argument that that having dorm reps is is illegal Maybe unless they're like I mean even if I don't know if the letter of the law you know, has an exception for this. Like, even if they were, like, democratically elected, I don't know if the law would allow for prisoners to be in that position if it was taken seriously. And then there is also, like we said before,

there's a certain religious community that forms around the prison. There's a volunteer group called Church of the Highlands that comes in and does services. They seem like good people. The prisoners seem to, really appreciate them. There's all kinds of ways that they enforce order among themselves. And sometimes it's, sometimes it's, I guess, there's a certain way in which violence is the way that they do that. Well, I kind of want to, as we zoom into the end here, I want to ask it kind of a two-part question.

Also, any last words that you have that you want to say is always open for that. But I'm interested in two things. What do you hope readers and listeners? Walk Away Understanding, like, you know, somebody reads your entire book and sets it down. What are you hoping they take away from that? And importantly, and always on this show, we talk about how people can actually get involved in the fight against this barbarism and injustice, particularly those living in Alabama, but there's prisons in every city, every state. People can organize around this issue and they should. So what do you hope readers take away? And how can people get involved specifically around the Alabama carcoral system?

Yeah, I mean, I guess what I hope readers take away is just, I mean, exactly how bad and how lawless this prison system is and how little oversight there is and how, you know, the state of Alabama and other states in the country are just, but the book is about Alabama. it's just barreling in the direction of getting worse and worse and has been for a long time. You know, I mean, just to put it in perspective, when those, when that federal litigation took place in the 70s to 80s, there was one year in particular. I think it was the 74 or 75 period, maybe it was 73 to 74, where the prison system was seen as a really scandalous year because of all the different incidents. And, you know, prisoners had died, a couple officers had been killed. And the number of deaths in the prison that year, that particularly scandalous year in the early 70s, was 27.

And now every year there's hundreds of deaths, every year. And often, in many years, it's just like breaking a record from the last year, you know. We are dozens of times worse now than we were in the early 70s. It's, we're going backwards. And I just, I mean, I hope people see, I hope people grasp from, from the book, like, how how a love on these people are, how little help there is, like just how constant and unrelenting the violence and the suffering is just all hours of the day. And so, and how it's just getting worse and worse. And I guess that leads into the second question, which is just, you know,

I think that people should get involved in any way they feel like they want to, you know, people can, you know, get involved with local, you know, groups that there are a lot of families that organize protests in Alabama. I'm sure we'd be happy to have people join. You know, maybe it may make, although this is not what I did, it may make more sense to look into these issues in your state. But it is really bad in Alabama. It's particularly bad, you know, highest homicide rate, highest suicide rate, highest,

suicide rate highest overdose rate in the country. So it's it's really bad in Alabama. And it's around it's between 170 and 200% over capacity. Oh sorry, of capacity every year. So 70 to 100% over capacity. Uh, so 70 to 100% over capacity every year. So it's really, really bad. And, you know, I know people are getting more interesting. in these issues. People become more interested in, you know, focused on like issues of policing and with more and more detention centers popping up around immigration. Like maybe this is a time where people will become, and with the documentary coming out on HBO, maybe this is a, maybe there's some momentum right now, but this is a time maybe where people start to become

more focused on these issues. But yeah, people can, you know, I think people should organize, people should write their lawmakers, they should write to prisoners, they should send books, you know, I mean, I think at this point it's going to take radical, it's going to take some pretty radical steps because there's no oversight right now except for us.

The courts are not going to do anything. Even if Alabama loses, I mean, they could be held in contempt court and I guess if it really gets to this point they could be fined and if they still don't cooperate officials could be jailed but then if they still don't cooperate like that's the last card for the courts you know and they'll just keep doing this so I think unless and until we as the people start to care about this and do something about it the reason that they're getting away with it is because we're letting them.

Yeah, yeah. Amen, I think organizing around this issue, especially in Alabama, is essential. You mentioned Alabama Appleseed is an organization. It doesn't just focus on prison as far as I understand, but it focuses on all the social issues revolving around. And of course, they also address Alabama's carceral system. The organization I mentioned earlier, which is Project Hope, to abolish the death penalty. It's a great way to get involved in Alabama around the penalty in particular, and then you come into contact with lots of the families of the people involved in that. I'm sure there are various lawyers, guilds and whatnot, fighting for innocence people like the Innocence Project. But even just, and I always mentioned this in our prison

episodes, like establishing a writing campaign, like an organization that, you know, writes to the prisoners inside, that sends books, that just has some human connection. And not only is edifying for just human connection overall, but it also, as we've talked about in previous episodes, is a lifeline for these prisoners, right? Prisoners that don't have people on the outside that give a fuck about them are more vulnerable in every way than those that do have people that will make calls,

that will monitor their situation, that will provide updates to the outside world. You know, those prisoners just statistically tend to do better than those who are kind of abandoned. So these are all things that people can do in Alabama, but as I said, in every single state around this issue. And this is important because this is an issue that as we mentioned in the beginning of this episode, a lot of people write off. All they're prisoners.

Who cares? They're the worst of our society. And that is precisely a location of struggle and humanity that those of us interested in building a better world should focus on, should highlight, should bring to the fore and should refuse to neglect. And honestly, Matthew, I think your book is a major contribution to understanding the problems, to seeing the humanity of the people on the inside and to inspire people. to actually get involved in the ways that you and I have described. So just to reiterate, the book is called Bullock Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American prison. I will, of course, link to it in the show notes. It's put out by friends of the show, Kersh Blabedeb, and they are a wonderful little publishing house that puts out really important books like this.

I encourage people to check this out and get involved in any way you can. So thank you so much, Matthew, for coming on the show. And keep in touch. If you do any other work, I'd love to have you back on to discuss it. Thanks so much. We'll do.