The Permanent Record Just City

Director Sylvia Ryerson discusses her film Calls From Home after a live screening hosted by Just City on April 13, 2024. The film follows a weekly radio broadcast that serves as an important communication tool for the families of incarcerated people in rural Appalachia.

Jacob Steimer, a journalist with MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, recently authored a series of stories on the presence of lead in neighborhoods across Memphis. He joined us to discuss the science of lead poisoning and how effective abatement strategies can help to lower crime rates.

This episode was recorded live as part of A Day With Just City.

In this special conversation with Cincinnati Black United Front’s Iris Roley, she shares her pioneering experience in seeking police accountability by centering Black community members in reform. She shares the story of filing a first-of-its-kind racial profiling class action settlement that led to a Collaborative Agreement between police and the community that has seen use of force and arrests halve in the two decades since it was first implemented. She talks about how to ensure different impacted groups feel included and find common ground, overcome resistance to oversight reforms, and use data to make a compelling case and evaluate progress.

Professor Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at UT-Austin joins us to delve into options for oversight as we see a rise in jail deaths, the risks of treating children as adults in the criminal legal system, and alternatives and best practices for jails. She discusses the importance of empathy for people in the criminal justice system and emphasizes we can have safety and a more humane system.
The Prison and Jail Innovation Lab

Insha Rahman, vice president for advocacy and partnership at the Vera Institute of Justice and expert on bail and pretrial detention, joined us to help correct misunderstandings about bail, and she points out that reforming pretrial detention can make our communities both safe and just. She parses out the politics from the policies both nationally and in Shelby County, Tennessee, where significant changes to the pretrial detention process were implemented in mid-February 2023.

They Knew Which Way to Run is a stunning look at the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy in India. The 7-part podcast series takes us on an amazing exploration of themes often discussed on The Permanent Record. Themes like accountability, pain, harm, and how we deal with those as human beings.