Incarceration & Developing Political Consciousness

Our newest Prison Pipeline host Nicole Solomon Lindahl interviews her friend and local activist, Melissa Salazar, and her brother Marcus, who calls in from a prison in Texas where he is serving a 5-10 year sentence.  They focus on Melissa's experience supporting her brother during his incarceration, his experience of prison life, and the impact that reading Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow and developing a political consciousness around mass incarceration has had on both of them.

 

Nicole’s podcast Prison Breakdown explores the past, present, and potential futures of mass incarceration, blending cutting edge academic research with the perspectives of people with direct experience with the criminal justice system.  Nicole coordinated a college program inside San Quentin prison for four years and holds a PhD in Jurisprudence & Social Policy.  Her research focuses on the life histories of men convicted of violent crimes who served long prison sentences under mass incarceration.