RATTLING THE BARS
Rattling the Bars puts the voices of the people most harmed by our system of mass incarceration at the center of our reporting on the fight to end it. The show was founded by the late Black Panther and political prisoner Marshall “Eddie” Conway, and is now hosted by Charles Hopkins, better known as Mansa Musa, who himself spent 48 years behind bars.
Rattling the Bars offers an honest look at the lives of prisoners, returning citizens, their families, and their communities. With Rattling the Bars, by presenting hard data and real-life stories, we examine and seek to shift public opinion around the misconception that incarceration, punishment, and increased policing make cities safer—the truth of which has been disproven by countless studies. The series examines the history and root causes of the current so-called justice system. It showcases individuals and communities nationwide who are grappling with real solutions to problems created by the prison-industrial complex.
Latest episode
Prison during the holidays isn’t what you think
From suicide spikes to solidarity, Mansa Musa explains what the holidays are really like inside U.S. prisons—and how people survive.
Recent episodes
Nicole Porter: The US is ‘by far the world’s number one jailer’
“There really isn’t an issue with mass incarceration in other countries,” Nicole Porter of The Sentencing Project tells us. “The United States by far is the world’s number one jailer.”
‘An accountability vacuum’: How Baltimore is enabling ICE’s lawlessness
“Our neighbors are disappearing without a trace,” Kori Skillman reports at Baltimore Beat.
How prisons and temp agencies exploit the most vulnerable workers
“Historically, temp workers and prison labor… [have] been used to bust union strikes,” Katherine Passley of Beyond the Bars says. “Well, what would it look like if we were to bring those people into the union so that they can’t bust these union efforts?”
Wisconsin moves to modernize prisons—but not fast enough to save lives
“I don’t think Wisconsin can afford to drag its feet while people are dying… It is high time for there to be some political urgency around the closure of these prisons and a real, committed goal to reduce Wisconsin’s prison population.”
‘The Alabama Department of Corrections is a drug cartel’
“Alabama prisons are completely lawless at this point,” author Matthew Whalan says. “A lot of the order that is injected into them is really just from prisoners organizing themselves.”
Inside the modern-day plantation: How theater confronts incarceration
The Peculiar Patriot, performed in more than 35 US prisons, reveals the human cost of mass incarceration and the enduring ties between slavery and the prison system.
Why more mega-prisons won’t fix Alabama’s crisis
“In 2024 alone, 277 people died in Alabama prisons” Dakarai Larriett, US Senate candidate in Alabama, says. “Building mega-prisons, naming one after governor Kay Ivy, is not the solution.”
Rural America wants to break its economic addiction to prisons
“75% of [Franklin County] voted for Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And I have people who are telling me, ‘I never really thought about incarceration before,’” but now “‘I’m finding out more about how incarceration works in Arkansas, [and] I’m really starting to question the way that the state locks so many people up.”
Nebraska inmate punished for speaking on wife’s podcast
“Don’t be afraid to fight back when you think that you’ve been wronged by the prison system because it’s so important that more of us are doing this so that they’re held accountable just like they expect our loved ones to be held accountable.”
Their kids were all killed by police. Now, they’re leading a movement
“We felt that there was a need for this organization because we didn’t see anywhere to go where someone could understand and could feel our pain with the loss of our children”
‘A soul-sucking, desolate hell’: How I survived America’s most secretive supermax prison
“You are not provided any joy, any stimulation—you got to find that yourself… I didn’t understand what weeks and months of silence can do to someone’s psyche. That can tear people apart if you’re not conscious of what’s happening to you.”
Trump’s loophole for mass-jailing immigrants: The US Marshals
“Most people think, ‘If you’re under US Marshal jurisdiction, you must have committed some horrible crime.’” Wanda Bertram of Prison Policy Initiative tells us. “But there’s a lot of people there who are just undocumented, and their cases are becoming criminalized.”
‘We’ve got four public prisons and one private prison closed’: CA abolitionist coalition takes on the prison-industrial complex
“We are pushing for the state to not only close prisons permanently and not reopen or sell them, but then to try and transform the conditions of the prison… detoxify the land, give it back to the local communities.”
Trump’s incarceration nation: ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is just the beginning
Collaborating with state governments, the Trump administration is building out an “unprecedented” mass incarceration system. “This is something we’ve not really seen at this scale before in the United States,” Shannon Heffernan of The Marshall Project tells us.
‘We want DC to be free!’ Voices from the ‘We are all DC’ march
“In the long run, the only way to deal with any of these issues—whether it’s ICE or the oppression of D.C. by the Trump administration, or Palestine—is [having] a united front. And this is an example of a united front.”
‘We are all DC’: Massive protests rock US capital in defiance of Trump
“People are seeing [they] could be next, and DC will either be the first or the last city under Trump’s military occupation…”
‘I believe in our people’s ability to find the light’: Celebrating Black August in dark times
“We don’t want Black August to become like a new Black History Month, where [it’s] just about celebrations or parties. That’s not the spirit of it. It’s in resistance and how we can prepare ourselves to resist our own oppression.”
DC residents rebel against Trump’s ‘gestapo takeover’ of US capital: ‘We don’t want a militarized city!’
“This is now such an obvious example of the war at home and how skewed our priorities are. We need the money we’re spending on militarizing our streets to be used to help the poor in DC.”
‘Crazy as hell!’ and ‘Distraction from Epstein’: Residents respond to Trump’s takeover of Washington, DC
“The state of mind of DC citizens right now is that they’re under a police state, mainly in the poor Black and Brown communities… their mandate is to harass the citizens of the District of Columbia.”
How medical examiners cover up for police killings and deny justice for grieving families
David Fowler, Maryland’s former Chief Medical Examiner, infamously argued that Minneapolis police weren’t responsible for George Floyd’s death in 2020. But his cop-protecting malpractices have denied justice to many more families.
America is built on prison labor. When will the labor movement defend prisoners?
“Incarcerated workers are a part of the working class,” award-winning journalist Kim Kelly says. And we are “not telling the real history of labor in this country if [we’re] not focusing on the organizing efforts and the labor of people who are in prison.”
What the government can do to you without due process
The Trump administration is pushing immigrants into a legal black hole created by America’s failed drug war.
‘Purposefully simulating chattel slavery’: Prisoners sue over ‘inhumane’ conditions on Angola’s brutal Farm Line
A groundbreaking lawsuit representing prisoners forced to work in “inhumane” conditions could finally put an end to Angola prison’s notorious “Farm Line.”
Trans inmates face rape and death with Trump’s Executive Order
“What you’re doing is sanctioning the death of transgender people… They are still human beings, and we should not be subjecting them to death because they do not conform to what our ideology of human beings should be.”
‘Prisons are akin to chattel slavery’: Inside the big business of prison farms and ‘agricarceral’ slave labor
“If you look at the history of agriculture in the United States, it’s built on dispossession, it’s built on enslavement,” says Joshua Sbicca, director of the Prison Agriculture Lab, and the legacy of that violence lives on in the big business of “agricarceral” farming today.
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