The United States leads the world in incarceration of children, and Liz  Ryan and the Youth First Initiative are leading the effort to change  that. Youth justice is a frequent topic of conversation in Memphis, and  Shelby County is considering a major expansion of its youth detention  facility. For this episode of The Permanent Record, we talked to Liz  about challenging the misconceptions of children in the justice system,  political will, and the possibilities that exist when we rethink youth  detention.  

Episode 43: Liz Ryan of Youth First

State Representative Andrew Farmer lives in Sevierville, Tennessee  and represents the 17th House District. He serves as Chair of the  Criminal Justice Subcommittee, and we suspected he had a family  connection to Dolly Parton. We invited him on the podcast to find out  about both.

Episode 42: State Representative Andrew Farmer

In this very special episode, we talked to Raymond Santana - one-fifth of the group now known as The Exonerated Five. Raymond and four other young men from NYC were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989. They are now the subject of Ava DuVernay's Netflix series, When They See Us.Seventeen years after being fully exonerated, they are finding their voices again. Raymond was in town for a few hours recently and agreed to give us a few minutes of his time. We think you'll love what he had to say.

Episode 41: Raymond Santana

Steven Hale is a staff writer for the Nashville Scene. He has been a media witness to three of Tennessee’s most recent executions. His written accounts of those experiences are very moving and provide critical insight to the politics and mechanics of capital punishment in Tennessee. Since the State has set more execution dates, including one in October, we asked Steven to join us to give his firsthand account and discuss some of the many issues surrounding our accelerated use of the death penalty.

Episode 40: Steven Hale

Noura Jackson was charged and convicted of killing her mother in a 2009 trial that made national headlines; however, citing significant missteps by the prosecutor in the case, her conviction was unanimously overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court. The lead prosecutor on the case was Shelby County’s current elected District Attorney. Maintaining her innocence, Noura entered an Alford plea to manslaughter and was released from prison 3 years ago. We sat down with Noura to talk about life before and after prison, what’s she’s up to now, and her hopes for the future.

Episode 39: Noura Jackson

Emily Bazelon's latest book Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration explores the critical role of the elected prosecutor in our criminal legal system. It prominently features the case of Noura Jackson, which resulted in an overturned conviction because of misconduct by the current Shelby County District Attorney General. Emily came to Memphis recently to promote her book, and she joined us in-studio for her second interview on The Permanent Record. We talked more about the power of elected prosecutors and even chatted about politics and the 2020 election.

Episode 38: Emily Bazelon

Earlier this year, the Marshall Project and local journalist, Wendi Thomas, filed a lawsuit against the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission  over its failure to disclose financial information and other records.  Simone Weichselbaum, who covers national policing policy for the  Marshall Project, was investigating the claims often made by Memphis  officials that an increase in the number of police officers has a direct  impact on violent crime. Simone ran into a dead end when the Crime  Commission refused to provide requested information, so they filed the  lawsuit.We talked to Simone about the  importance of transparency when making public safety policy; some of the  unusual things she discovered about the Memphis Police Department; and  the challenges of diversity and inclusion in journalism. We hope you  enjoy our conversation.

Episode 37: Simone Weichselbaum

Carrie Johnson ist the Justice Correspondent for National Public Radio’s Washington Desk. She covers a wide range of emerging justice issues, law enforcement stories, and legal affairs. Carrie is one of our only repeat guests on The Permanent Record. Check out her first interview (Episode 16) in our four-part series on the media. For this episode, we spoke to Carrie about the practical implications of the recently passed First Step Act and the politics that made its passage possible.

Episode 36: Carrie Johnson

The new  year brought new Federal criminal justice and prison reform, so we're  devoting the next few episodes of the Permanent Record to examining the  First Step Act. It has been widely praised and was broadly supported by a  bi-partisan coalition that has become very rare for Congress. President  Trump recently signed the bill, and when it goes into effect it will  reduce our federal prison population. But what else will this bill do --  and what are the next steps we need to take for more meaningful reform  to occur? In this episode, we discussed these questions and more with  Mark Holden, General Counsel to Koch Industries, one of the bill's most  outspoken supporters.

Episode 35: Mark Holden

Rudy Valdez is a filmmaker committed to making cinematic, meaningful documentary films that inspire social change. We invited him on The Permanent Record to discuss his latest film, The Sentence, a documentary about mandatory minimums and sentencing reform that he shot and directed over the course of a decade. It’s available now on HBO.

Episode 34: Rudy Valdez

Every time we sentence a person to jail or prison, we also sentence a family to a life without that person. The demands on the families of incarcerated people are often overlooked, but Veda Ajamu’s family is all too familiar with the many burdens of having a loved one locked up. For this episode, Veda gave us a vivid look at how her family has struggled to stay connected to her brother, Robert, during his decades in the Federal prison system.Veda lives in Memphis and works for the National Civil Rights Museum; she is also very active with FAMM, an organization devoted to preserving the dignity of those on the inside and supporting their families as they try to stay connected. Check out FAMM’s video featuring Veda and then give our latest episode a listen.

Episode 33: Veda Ajamu

In mid-October, Tennessee announced that Edmund Zagorski would be executed on November 1, 2018, and the State intends to use the electric chair to do it. If carried out, it will mark the second execution in Tennessee this year, after nearly a decade without one. Native Tennessean Shane Claiborne recently wrote a book about the death penalty in America. The book is called Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why it’s Killing Us. In light of Tennessee’s grim return to capital punishment, we invited Shane on The Permanent Record to talk about what’s wrong with the death penalty, how we got here, and where we’re headed as a state and a country.Check out Shane’s book www.executinggrace.com

Episode 32: Shane Claiborne

Dr. Margaret Vandiver is a retired professor of  criminal justice at the University of Memphis and a strong supporter of  Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. She has studied state  and collective violence, ranging from the use of the death penalty in  America to contemporary instances of genocide. She is the author of Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South and also volunteers with the Lynching Sites Project here  in Memphis. John Ashworth is the executive director for the Memphis  Lynching Sites Project, and also joined us for this episode. John spent  several decades in the military and the airline industry before taking  the lead in this important work. We discussed some of the critical  issues facing our criminal justice system today and why it’s important  to have a space to discuss the past.

Episode 31: Dr. Margaret Vandiver & John Ashworth

The Daily Memphian is a brand new local media outlet, and its first issue included an expansive investigative piece -- “A Reluctance to Record”. It's a must-read that reveals yet another instance where part of the criminal justice system in Memphis is an extreme outlier -- the Memphis Police Department does not record homicide interrogations. We thought this critical issue deserved even more attention so we asked the author, Marc Perrusquia, to come on The Permanent Record to discuss it. Perrusquia is Distinguished Journalist in Residence at the University of Memphis, heading up the newly established Institute of Public Service Reporting. He is also reporting for the Daily Memphian and worked for more than 29 years at The Commercial Appeal, where he won numerous state and national awards for his work. Hear what he has to say about his months-long investigative reporting on this story.We’ve also posted the full audio of two recordings referenced during the interview. Cordell Walton “Packaged Confession”https://www.dropbox.com/s/3q8uc5p0m786e79/Cordell%20Walton%20confession-1.m4a?dl=0Cordell Walton Preliminary Hearing 09.17.2018 Detective Eric Kelly Testimonyhttps://www.dropbox.com/s/37oyilwdaiorawg/Sept%2017%20prelim%20hearing.m4a?dl=0

Episode 30: Marc Perrusquia

The Shelby County general election is less than a week away, and your host is a hopeless political junkie. So, for this special episode, Josh convened a special election roundtable with two of Memphis' top political reporters. Ryan Poe of the Commercial Appeal and Bill Dries of the Memphis Daily News have been covering elections up and down the ballot for this and many elections past. Hear what they have to say about the County Mayor's race, the new County Commission, and the impact that the Juvenile Court oversight has had on this election. Plus, a lot more!

Episode 29: Bill Dries and Ryan Poe

With election season in Shelby County in full swing, we present one of two recent interviews with the candidates for County Mayor. David Lenoir has played SEC football, started a mutual fund, and served two terms as Shelby County Trustee. He is now the Republican candidate in the race for Mayor.When recently discussing the challenges facing our community, Lenoir pointed to his faith and said this, "So, for me, it is top of mind and a real desire and passion of mine that we, as a community, come together as one. I've seen the power and benefit of it in my own personal life." Listen to our conversation with him about sentencing, pretrial detention, and what it means to be "the County's banker."

Episode 28: David Lenoir

With election season in Shelby County in full swing, we present one of two recent interviews with the candidates for County Mayor. Lee Harris has been a City Councilman, a State Senator, and is now the Democratic candidate in the race for Mayor. A native Memphian, when asked about moving home to Memphis instead of a taking a job on Wall Street after law school, Sen. Harris said, “I’ve always been a big challenge kind of guy. Going to Wall Street is not a challenge.” He sat down with us and discussed some of those challenges - crime and punishment, public safety, and his readiness for the job he's seeking. 

Episode 27: Lee Harris

Our guest for this episode is Luther Ivory. He shared some of his experience growing up in Memphis during the Civil Rights era, including a very significant evening at Mason Temple on April 3, 1968. Today, Luther Ivory is mostly retired from his job as an associate professor of religious studies and director of African American studies at Rhodes College. He has also planted and pastored multiple churches, toured the world aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer and raised a family in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. His warmth and enthusiasm were contagious, and you’ll love his stories and his passion for life. All are very apparent from this recent interview.For more of Lu’s story, check out this 2013 opinion piece in The Christian Science Monitor.Check out our newest sponsor Sudio Sweden! Fashionable/high quality bluetooth headphones. Use promo code PERMANENT at checkout for 15% off!

Episode 26: Luther Ivory

Our latest episode features founder and executive director of Playback Memphis, Virginia Murphy, and Memphis Police Officer Chris Street. Officer Street is former military and makes for the quintessential cop in appearance and pedigree. But the way he describes his job and his experiences as a police officer will surprise you. Virginia brings grace, thoughtfulness and delight to otherwise daunting situations. Those gifts have given her organization its staying power for nearly a decade. Here’s to 10 more years of Playback Memphis!

Episode 25: Virginia Murphy & Officer Chris Street

Homeboy Industries bills itself as the largest gang intervention program on the planet. There is little doubt that this unassuming collection of neighbors has transformed thousands of lives and saved thousands more. The Homies, as they are known, give tours, bake bread, learn trades, and generally invest in each other and their neighborhoods. Two Homies, Omar and Jason, were in town recently with Homeboy founder Father Greg Boyle, and we sat down with them for a few minutes to get the inside scoop. It was a delightful conversation that we hope you enjoy.Learn more about Homeboy at homeboyindustries.org. Listen to a brilliant conversation with Father Greg here.

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