Nine out of ten people who spend time in prison in Arkansas eventually return home to their communities to begin a new life. And what happens in prison doesn’t necessarily stay in prison: a person who is released to begin anew brings with him or her the cumulative effects of all they experienced inside prison walls. What happened to them while they served time? How did that experience affect them? And then, how does it affect the way they are able to interact with their communities once released? That’s a question that concerns all of us – not only as family and community members, but as taxpayers.
Disability Rights Arkansas recently joined forces with DecARcerate Arkansas to publish a report focusing on solitary confinement in Arkansas’s prisons. The report examines Arkansas’s use of solitary confinement, which is four times the national average – the highest in the country. Tonight on Speak Up Arkansas, we’re going to talk about the findings of the report, and the use of solitary confinement in our state’s prisons. Who goes to solitary? Why? For how long? What are the effects that solitary confinement has on prisoners? And why what happens in solitary matters to ALL of us. We examine these questions – and hear powerful and painful first-person accounts of life in solitary. Solitary confinement in Arkansas’s prisons is our topic tonight on Speak Up Arkansas.
Guests include co-chairs Morgan Leyenberger and Laura Berry of the Movement to End Solitary Confinement; David Morgan, a formerly incarcerated juvenile who was serving life without parole; and Kris Stewart, an advocate with DRA.
You can listen live TONIGHT at 5:00 p.m. on KABF 88.3 FM or livestream the show at KABF.org. And as always, we’ll be posting the show recording on our website so you can listen later and share anytime.
SHOW NOTES
The upcoming report Solitary Confinement in Arkansas, authored by Nancy Dockter in partnership with DecARcerate and Disability Rights Arkansas, will be available at both organizations’ websites upon its release in January. We’ll post links at that time.
Get involved in the movement to end solitary confinement, keep up with legislative updates, etc. at DecARcerate’s website – https://www.decarceratear.org/