Mass Incarceration: How Systemic and Historical Racism affects the US Prison System and Treatment of Joan Perez

Our podcast will aim at answering the question: what implications do historical racism and slavery have in the US Prison systems that we see today and how do historical structures, specifically incarceration, carry through to the present? Our podcast will illuminate this question by providing a brief historical analysis of influential events that occurred in the US that have directly affected the police brutality that affects many Black Americans. We will then segway into a discussion of how police brutality towards Black Americans have modern implications on their life by focusing on the lack of trust between the community and police department. An interview was conducted with Erich Kussman, a New Jersey ex-convict who spent 12 years in prison for robbery. Mr. Kussman now works as a priest and spoke to the inequalities he personally witnessed both before and during his sentence in NJ state prison. His interview helps us uncover experiences most people might not be familiar with that shed light on police brutality within prisons. We will also delve into how a lack of trust between police and minority citizens creates internal turmoil, as well as how it helps to maintain the socio-economic and racial disparities between Black and White Americans. In our podcast, we focus on how certain police department protocols, such as patrolling in low-income neighborhoods and abuse of power from police officers, have negatively tainted the relationship between Black Americans and the police department.