When Michael Owens was an angry and traumatized young man, he committed a horrible crime and was sentenced to Life Without Parole (LWOP). For a long time, while in prison, he continued to engage in self-destructive behavior. But even while he has no guarantee he will ever see the outside of a prison again, Michael has been able to turn his life around. He has gotten education while behind bars. He has become a mentor to younger incarcerated people but also youths on the outside in danger of making the same mistakes he has. Listen to a remarkable story about transformation and rehabilitation by a man condemned to die in prison.

One of the problems with mass incarceration is that we end up incarcerating people who at one point committed violent and dangerous crimes long past the point at which they are no longer a danger to society. The case of Arturo Luna is instructive, raised in a tough environment, he committed crimes at a young age. But now has become a mentor, become educated is a completely different person from the one who entered prison. Listen as he tells an amazing first hand account of transformation and redemption.

This week on Everyday Injustice, we talk with Angie Gordon. Angie is a 39-year-old trans woman serving a 48-years-to-life sentence in the state of California. Convicted of multiple violent felonies in 2009; so, in April of 2024 she will have served fifteen years of her sentence. Before coming to prison, Angie was a high school dropout, but since her incarceration, she has devoted her time to furthering her education. She received her GED in 2013, completed multiple associate degrees in 2019, and in 2022 was part of the first graduating class in the Transforming Outcomes Project at Sacramento State, a bachelor's level program in communication studies offered to incarcerated students in California prisons. Despite the limited degree tracks available to incarcerated students, Angie also pursued an autodidactic trajectory in post-graduate level scholarship, focusing her attention on transgender studies, corrections, and queer criminology. A Department of Justice study found that, nationally, trans individuals report having been the victims of sexual assault while incarcerated at a rate ten times higher than non-trans prisoners. A study conducted in California prisons found that trans women housed in male-designated facilities report having been the victims of sexual assault while incarcerated at a rate thirteen times higher than male prisoners. A congressional study found that prison rape often goes unreported, and that "most prison staff are not adequately trained or prepared to prevent, report or treat sexual assaults." In 2013, Carman Guerrero, a trans woman incarcerated at Kern Valley State Prison, was murdered by her cellmate only nine hours after she was forced into the cell with her killer by prison staff against her will. In 2017 at Valley State Prison, an incarcerated trans woman was found dead in her cell, a pencil lodged into her ear and neck; subsequently, the local district attorney's office declined to pursue the case as a murder, claiming a lack of sufficient evidence. Listen as Angie Gordon explains why she chose to transition and why she chose to remain at a male prison.

It is described as: “A riveting and heart-wrenching story of violence, grief and the American justice system, exploring the systemic issues that perpetuate gang participation in one of the wealthiest cities in the country, through the story of one teenager.” Professor Laurence Ralph, tells the story of Sito, a relative of his and the tragedy of his life - first wrongly accused of murder and then five years later, the brother of the slain teen exacts his revenge. Listen as Professor Ralph describes this tragic account but also how he relates it to the overall tragedy and the need for transformational reform of the justice system.

Stephanie Marudas and Emily Previti have joined forces to launch the podcast series, Obscured. Marudas is the founder of Kouvenda Media and co-creator of Obscured. Prior to founding Kouvenda Media, she reported for WYPR in Baltimore and WHYY in Philadelphia. Previti is executive editor and co-creator of Obscured. Before joining Kouvenda Media, she covered voting rights and election administration for NPR affiliate WITF and The GroundTruth Project during 2019-2021. Listen as Marudas and Previti talk about the need for hard-hitting journalism projects focusing on under-reported topics and coverage gaps. They also explained what the series looks like and why they chose law enforcement trauma survivors as the subject for the first series of Obscured.

This week on Everyday Injustice Jarrett Adams – himself exonerated of a wrongful conviction – is seeking to undo a massive injustice in Virginia. Despite the fact that a jury found Terrence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne not guilty of murder, a judge was able to sentence them to life in prison. They have currently spent 22 years behind bars, but Jarrett Adams is trying to free them, having recently argued before the Virginia Supreme Court. “The Court’s decision to sentence Terrence and Ferrone to life in prison despite being found not guilty robbed due process of its very meaning,” said Jarrett Adams. “The U.S. Supreme Court must do away with its ruling in U.S. v Watts, which gives a judge the discretion to make a jury’s finding meaningless, and prevent further miscarriages of justice from occurring like the one we see in this case.” Listen to Adams describing this remarkable and unthinkable injustice in the criminal legal system.

This week on Everyday Injustice, we talk with Dr. Paul Elam, chief strategy officer at the Michigan Public Health Institute & leads Advance Peace. There is increasingly an understanding that issues such as gun violence cannot simply be addressed in the criminal legal system and that we cannot arrest our way out of the problem. Elam discusses how gun violence is a public health issue and discusses the problem of cyclical gun violence and how other approaches can start to address this public health problem.

Having survived multiple recall attempts in his first term, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón officially launched his reelection in October at the SEIU Local 2015 office in front of a room full of supporters – many of them health care workers. The DA noted his mother, an immigrant from Cuba often had to toil, working for below minimum wages. That has translated into a commitment to fight for working people. “We don’t talk about one of the biggest crimes in our history,” he explained. “It’s a theft of wages. A theft of labor. Billions of dollars each and every year – which impacts all of us by the way, because when you steal from workers, you’re stealing from the tax base of our community. You’re stealing from families. You are taking food away from babies. You are often precluding people from having a roof over their heads.” Gascón also noted that despite the decline in crime, he is being attacked for being soft on crime. He said, “I find it interesting when Republicans like Ron Desante and fellow presidential run also out on TV and says, while he’s in la, he talks about how crime is out proportion here and how burglars are now being prosecuted and organized retail theft because of George Gascón.” He said one of his staffer Googled organized retail theft in Florida. “The first thing that pops up is videos of people storming stores in Miami and other parts of Florida. And then we went to Houston and we looked at some other southern cities. And guess what? It’s a national problem,” he said. He noted that they aren’t pointing this out because it doesn’t fit their narrative. He said, “We need to make sure that we do not embrace the narrative that the Republicans have been using for the last 40 years. You can go back to Nixon when we were talking about the war on drugs and the war on crime. And it’s the same thing. And it cycles over and over and over again. Even though today as a nation, we have historically some of the lowest numbers of crime that we’ve ever had.” He added, “Now we’re seeing crime going down at a very rapid rate and hopefully soon approaching pre pandemic times. And some people say, well, we don’t believe those numbers.” Gascón pushed back noting that those are the numbers from LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department. “You believe those numbers two years ago. Why don’t you believe it today? We don’t make the numbers,” he continued. He added, “But you know what it really tells us is that we can have reform and safety.”

This week on Everyday Injustice, we are joined by Jason Smith, Executive Director of the Michigan Center for Youth Justice. The Michigan Center for Youth Justice (MCYJ) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing policies and practices that reduce confinement and support trauma-informed, racially equitable, socio-economically and culturally responsive, community-based solutions for Michigan’s justice-involved children, youth and young adults. Listen as Jason Smith discusses their current legislative advocacy and projects, and the progress that has been made on age appropriate services.

This week on Everyday Injustice we have Caroline Isaacs, the Executive Director of Just Communities Arizona. JCA is an abolitionist organization that seeks to end the current punishment system and its emphasis on criminalization, surveillance, and mass incarceration. They envision a world in which prisons and jails are unnecessary. “We believe those directly impacted by the current punishment system are central to this discussion and must be leaders in the movement to end mass incarceration,” they explain. They add, “We believe local communities know best how to create safety and wellbeing for themselves; they should have agency in decisions that impact their lives, and these efforts should be fully supported and funded.” Listen as Caroline Isaacs discusses what that means and that can be accomplished.

Freddie Gray was one of the seminal police killings when it occurred in Baltimore in 2016, leading to protests and riots and calls for reform. The officers were charged with murder by SAO Marilyn Mosby, but not of them were convicted. Justine Barron in her book “They Killed Freddie Gray” following the work of her podcast, after sifting through thousands of documents and interviewing witnesses, concludes that the State Attorney and Media got the narrative and the killing completely wrong. The forward to her book notes, “The media just as uncritically turned an enarmored eye to State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who emerged as a hero on the national stage, having pressed charges against six officers in the death of Gray.” It added, “What the media failed to take notice of was that these superficially valiant prosecutions were based on the same false narrative the Baltimore City Police Department itself was hoping everyone would buy into” – and they did – “hook, line, and sinker.” The rough ride narrative, Barron debunks and arguing instead that police likely killed Gray when they threw him head first into the van at Stop 2. In her speech, Mosby issued a call for peace – and by announcing the prosecution, she stopped the protests and riots in their tracks – what Barrone argues was her actual goal. She came to believe that the prosecution “was not so much accountability as the manufacturing of consent and silencing of dissent.” Listen as Barron joins Everyday Injustice to discussion her book and its implications for police reform.