I’ve been visiting prisons for seven years, and I can tell you that prison is designed to dehumanize.
Numbers instead of names. Gray, tasteless food. Baggy, monochrome uniforms. Concrete walls and barbed wire. These are the visuals of prison. They serve to humiliate the people confined inside, and to alienate them from the officers who watch over them. These visuals are a constant reminder that incarcerated people are considered less-than.
These are the same visuals we are usually served in the media. A snarling mugshot. A shuffling prisoner with chains on his hands and his feet. A person in a dark cage with steel bars. These visuals tell us that incarcerated people are dangerous, different, and contemptible.
These visuals are used to justify the largest system of mass incarceration on Earth, in which 1.9 million people are currently locked up in the US, and over 79 million people have criminal records. That means about one in four Americans have a record. And yet, paradoxically, the visuals of prison teach us that people trapped in the legal system are very different from the rest of “us.”
As the director of KALW’s Uncuffed program, which teaches audio storytelling in prisons, I have seen all these visuals. I have also encountered incredible individuals with deep insights, powerful stories, and earth-shaking laughs. The visuals do not do justice to the humanity inside.
In the Uncuffed program, we teach incarcerated people the same tools of making radio that we practice every day at KALW. They’re the tools I learned as a fellow in KALW’s Audio Academy: how to use a mic, how to ask interview questions, how to structure a story. Participants tell their personal stories on the program, sometimes for the very first time.The one thing we don’t teach is how your voice should sound. Because the best radio voice is the one you already have. We coach people to let go of their conceptions of what a “radio voice” should sound like, and become comfortable using their own voices, accents, and figures of speech. Like every program at KALW, we aren’t going for slick, detached, professionalism. We’re going for humanity.
One thing that I have always loved about radio is the intimacy of the human voice. When I listen to the radio, I am tuned to a single voice, and that voice is nearer and louder than the sound of my own thoughts.
When we listen to Uncuffed, all the oppressive visuals of prison melt away. Instead of looking at a uniform, we hear a voice, with its own warmth and natural grain. That voice could be an uncle, a neighbor, a friend. We relate to the human being, not to their circumstances.That’s why I believe audio is a uniquely powerful medium for encountering stories from inside prison, and a uniquely powerful medium for creating social change. So many of our injustices are built on dehumanizing narratives, and categories that divide us against them. The human voice is one key for connecting us with each other.At KALW, we believe that audio is an essential ingredient for social change. Too often, it’s the missing ingredient. Voices create stories. Stories create narratives. Narratives create beliefs. And beliefs create policies.
To create change, especially in this age, we need to be able to hear each other speak. We need to be able to listen.
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This piece was brought to you by KALW Speaks, a monthly series of essays from KALW staff and contributors, exploring the ideas that drive our work. Each of these essays reflect our commitment to innovation and invites you into a deeper conversation about the future of public media.
Learn more: From A Whisper To A Roar.
