prison

February 11, 2015

Prison Reform and Abolition: BGF, New Prison Leadership & More

February 10, 2015 - Segment 2 - In light of the news that Tavon White - the Black Guerrilla Family member who ran a drug ring in prison and impregnated four guards - would receive a lightened sentence because he gave key testimony against other inmates and guards, we discuss prison reform and abolition.
December 14, 2014

From The Archives: Baltimore Jail Growing Food & Flowers

December 11, 2014 - Segment 3 - We listen back to a special 2010 archive edition of the Steiner Show, part of our Urbanite Stories series. Marc speaks to Correctional Officer Maurice Smith of the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore about a prison garden program he ran where inmates grew food and flowers, creating a serene and welcoming corner in an otherwise stark environment.
October 27, 2014

Piper Kerman, Author of ‘Orange Is The New Black’

October 24, 2014 - Segment 2 - Listen to my live interview with Piper Kerman, whose best-selling memoir of her time in prison, Orange is the New Black, is the basis for the popular television series of the same name. Kerman will be speaking at Center Stage in Baltimore on Monday as part of the Open Society Institute-Baltimore's Big Change event.
October 26, 2014

Michelle Alexander On Mass Incarceration and African Americans

October 23, 2014 - Segment 5 - We close out the show with a special archive edition of The Marc Steiner Show, our conversation with civil rights litigator and legal scholar Michelle Alexander about mass incarceration and African Americans. Alexander is the author of the highly-acclaimed book The New Jim Crow.
February 21, 2014

CeCe McDonald, Trans Woman & Activist, Released From Prison

February 20, 2014 - Segment 3 - Listen to our interview with CeCe McDonald, a transgender woman and activist from Minneapolis, and Katie Burgess, Executive Director of Trans Youth Support Network in Minneapolis. McDonald was released from prison on January 13th after serving 19 months for her alleged involvement in stabbing a man with scissors.
September 26, 2013

What The Unger Decision Means For Those Released

September 26, 2013 - Segment 3 - Walter Lomax joins us to talk about an upcoming town hall meeting focusing on juveniles convicted under the felony murder law, September 28 at Morgan State University. Lomax is Project Director of the Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative, a program of Fusion Partnerships.
August 27, 2013

MD Court Of Appeals Questions Fairness Of Jury Convictions Before 1980

August 27, 2013 - Segment 1 - We begin our show with a discussion on a Maryland Court of Appeals ruling last year that called into question the fairness of jury convictions before 1980, and led to the release from prison last week of five men who had been convicted of murder.
August 27, 2013

Trans & Incarcerated: Chelsea Manning and “Orange Is The New Black”

August 26, 2013 - Segment 1 - We begin the week with a conversation about transgender people who are incarcerated, in light of Bradley Manning's announcement last week that she identifies as a woman named Chelsea.
April 16, 2013

Shackling Incarcerated Pregnant Women In Maryland

April 16, 2013 - Segment 2 - We continue our coverage of a bill that was introduced in the Maryland Legislature this past session, which would have prohibited the shackling of incarcerated pregnant women and women in labor.
February 7, 2013

Shane Bauer On Solitary Confinement

February 7, 2013 - Segment 1 - Shane Bauer, an independent journalist based in Oakland who wrote an article about solitary confinement for Mother Jones titled "Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside American Prisons."
October 31, 2011

October 31, 2011 – Hour 1

Marshall "Eddie" Conway was the Minster of Defense of the Baltimore Chapter of the Black Panther Party, and a United States Postal Service worker, when he was arrested and charged with shooting three Baltimore police officers, killing one of them, in 1970.  He was convicted and has been imprisoned since.  We'll hear from some of his supporters who

March 16, 2011

March 16, 2011 – Segment 3

Kirk Bloodsworth spent eight years in prison in Maryland - including two on death row - for a crime he did not commit.  At his release in 1993 he became the first person sentenced to death row who was exonerated by the then-new technique of DNA fingerprinting.  He joins us in the studio today to discuss the future of the death penalty in Maryland, and his advocacy work for reform of the dea

December 7, 2010

December 7, 2010 – Segment 1

Mary Joel Davis has worked with women in prison and former prisoners for over thirty years.  She founded Alternative Directions, which provides legal assistance and re-entry support to women.  Recently she founded a new program, Second Chance, to focus on women serving life sentences.  She joins us to discuss why she believes many women should be let out of prison early.

May 27, 2010

May 27, 2010 – Hour 2

Oil continues to flood into the gulf, as President Obama held a press conference to defend the US government's handling of the oil spill today.  We speak with Jackie Savitz, Senior Campaign Director for the pollution campaigns at Oceana, for an update on the disaster and its implications for the future of US energy policy.

January 26, 2009

Charles Blow on why black children still face enormous challenges

Charles Blow, the visual op-ed columnist for the New York Times, is our guest today to discuss his most recent column titled "No More Excuses."

From The New York Times:

For the presidential inauguration, blacks descended on Washington in droves with a fanatical, Zacchaeus-like need to catch a glimpse of this M.L.K. 2.0. “Ooo-bama!” For them, he was it — a game changer, soul restorer, dream fulfiller. Everything. Ooo-K.


Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the majority whip, tapped into the fervor Monday night at the BET Honors awards in Washington when he proclaimed, “Every child has lost every excuse.”


What? That’s where I have to put my foot down. That’s going a bridge too far.


I’m a big proponent of personal responsibility, but children too often don’t have a choice. They are either prisoners of their parentage or privileged by it. Some of their excuses are hollow. But other excuses are legitimate, and they didn’t magically disappear when Obama put his left hand on the Lincoln Bible.


Representative Clyburn and those like him would do well to cool this rhetoric lest the enormous and ingrained obstacles facing black children get swept under the rug as Obama is swept into power. For instance:


• According to Child Trends, a Washington research group, 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Also, black children are the most likely to live in unsafe neighborhoods. And, black teenagers, both male and female, were more likely to report having been raped.


• According to reports last year from the National Center for Children in Poverty, 60 percent of black children live in low-income families and a third live in poor families, a higher percentage than any other race.


• A 2006 report from National Center for Juvenile Justice said that black children are twice as likely as white and Hispanic children to be the victims of “maltreatment.” The report defines maltreatment as anything ranging from neglect to physical and sexual abuse.


Most of these kids will rise above their circumstances, but too many will succumb to them. Can we really blame them?


Malcolm Gladwell probably said it best in a November interview with New York magazine about his new book, “Outliers”: “I am explicitly turning my back on, I think, these kind of empty models that say, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. Well, actually, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The world decides what you can and can’t be.”


So black people have to keep their feet on the ground even as their heads are in the clouds. If we want to give these children a fighting chance, we must change the worlds they inhabit. That change requires both better policies and better parenting — a change in our houses as well as the White House.


President Obama is a potent symbol, but he’s no panacea.