Melanie newport newport. Shes the author of this is my jail local politics the rise of mass incarceration. Newport teaches urban and criminal justice history at the university of connecticut. Hartford. She is series editor with the chicago visions and revisions series at the university of chicago press. Newports research has been supported recently by university of connecticut humanities. University of, illinois at chicago libraries and, the black Metropolis Research consortium. She received a ph. D. In history Temple University in 2016. Newport hails tulsa, oklahoma and tacoma and lives in west hartford, connecticut. Dr. Amanda klonsky is a lecturer at the university of chicago crown school of social work and the author of the forthcoming book pandemic of punishment to be published by beacon press. This pivotal work chronicles the experience of people in american jails and prisons during the covid crisis. Until recently, she served as a at the ucla law covered bars data project. Amanda led Education Programs in jails and prisons for more than 15 years and holds a doctorate in Education Leadership from harvard universal. Thank you very much for being here. Thanks to everyone for coming and thanks for supporting. Good. Can you hear me now . Thanks, everyone, for coming. Nice to see you, melanie thanks. Im glad to be here. So tell us how you got interested in this project. You know something, as simple as my dissertation advisor to me. What about jails . And we had this kind of great of, like, we dont know anything about. Jails. Oh, my gosh. And so it started out initially that i was doing National Level research, and then i got to chicago and found the story of Winston Moore, who was regarded 1970s as the nations first black jail warden at Cook County Jail. And i was i just fell into his story and, had to understand. How this person happened as a kind of law and order jail warden whos simultaneously saying that hes kind of using the jail to liberate black people. What does this mean . And how did this develop . So. Tell us more about Winston Moore. Its probably a lot of people in the audience who dont know his story. Yeah. I mean, Winston Moore had come as a psychologist, was working in the state juvenile prison system. And at a time when, you know, the Civil Rights Movement was the most active in chicago during the kind of midtolate 1960s. There was a real sense that the jail was kind of a pivotal site. Racial unrest. You know, at the time it was 80 to 90 black. The makeup, the population. And so there was an attitude kind of publicly that the that it would take a black person to get this jungle of a jail under control and. So they looked to Winston Moore to, come in and get things in. He carries the largest Expansion Program in the jails history. Hes responsible for the merger of the city jail and the county jail producing, the Cook County Department of corrections, which what exists today. And hes person who says, this is my jail. Right. He has this sense of political over this institution, but hes also the one who ends up being probably held more accountable than anybody in the jails. History for the bad things that happened there. And so theres kind of complex story about his role in a kind of white supremacist criminal legal system and his own kind of political vulnerability as his advocates become less powerful in the democratic system. So a piece of the story that you just gestured that is about the the Civil Rights Movement, the black liberation in chicago, and what was happening the jail during moores tenure as a result of those battles on the streets of chicago. And you said that there was always mass incarceration in chicago. Chicago offers one of the most profound examples of how racial makeup. The racial makeup, the jail population was disproportionately predominantly black informed the of jail policy in different moments. You say more about what you meant by that. How antiblack racism in particular has provided a rationale for the expansion of the jail . Sure. I mean, i think it goes back to the first person ever jailed in cook county for the crime being a public charge, edwin heath cook. He was a free black who in 1842 had gotten in a fight with somebody that he was working for a white man and the guy had him arrested on suspicion being a slave. And so he was put in the cook jail. Nobody came to claim him because he was free. He didnt have the right paperwork to prove his freedom. And so eventually, sheriff was like, we just have to auction him off. So they had a slave sale. The jails steps, and nobody came forward. So one of the city fathers bought him for like quarter and gave him his freedom. And its just this. 1842, right . This is still the very beginnings of chicago. And yet this association that if you are a free laborer or if you are black in this place, you are to being incarcerated. And this is perpetual. It really takes off. During the great migration, we see some of the most arguments for jail expansion after decades of resistance happening after, the chicago riot. Right. The sense that because there was not just fear that the riot was going to come into the jail, but that the riot was going to come out of the jail because there were so many black men incarcerated. There. And they had already had during other incidences of Police Violence and public against africanamericans. So one of the things i wanted to do with, this book after really looking at the data, was that, you know, its not just about the numbers, right . A lot of people like to say mass incarceration happened in the 1970s. Right. With the expansion prison, the rising numbers of incarcerated people, the disproportion and persecution of people of. But what i found in this is that as long as there were black people in, they were always disproportionately represented. And it was always acknowledged by people who were doing the research. People who were making the policy were very aware of this. And so i wanted to kind of, i think, make this deeper history known by kind of complicating the story of massacres in such an important contribution. Theres a line in this book that sent chills up my spine. You wrote when fred hampton said you can jail a revolutionary, but you cant jail the revolution, Winston Moore had proven that he was not above trying. Can you tell us more about the connection between Winston Moore and the murder of chairman hampton and the repression of the black party in particular . Sure. So, you know, one of the things that i found was, as Winston Moore was taking power in, the jail, this is kind of at the fever pitch of. Really the the political repression of left politics in in the city of chicago. So when chairman fred is out in the streets, kind of challenging. Right. Not just a racial inequality, but the entire system of government and kind of people, you know, the possibility Coalition Politics as a way out within the jail, theyre getting very nervous that people are being radicalized, especially the police are arresting these radicals and theyre coming into the jail and finding solidarity. Jailed people. You know, people like the founder of the young lords coming in to the jail and reading the autobiography of malcolm x that was given to him by an librarian. Right. And hes even more deeply politicized when it comes out. So they know that this is the jail is this kind of fragile. And so, you know, as far as the jails roll in, political repression right. Chairman fred was jailed, went people who survived the assault on his apartment were right after he was. And really the entire orientation of the jail became, you know, how can we use things security especially to control the politicization of people to dampen their demands for recognition of their rights and to ultimately get them kind of beaten down enough by the process to where theyre too vulnerable, not able enough to to advocate for themselves. And so when we look at this kind of world of anti radicalism in the city, we have to take into account the jail is kind of ground zero for government efforts, kind of try and manipulate those political sensibilities of marginalized people. You said in the book as well that the the people who were used inside the Panther Party to turn on chairman fred and mark clarke were were jailed right that actually their political their status as jailed people was what led to that and that they were recruited inside the jail as informants is that right. Right. Yeah so we see the Chicago Police and the fbi right were using the jail as a place to cultivate informants, which is one of those things like i think that challenges us to consider more deeply the degree of vulnerability that people feel when theyre in the jail that you know, this is not a place where you have the kind of freedom to focus on beating your case or to take care of the kind of business that you need to on the outside in terms people, you know, are are concerned about, losing their home, losing their job. This is a place where you are at the mercy of, the administrators. This is very much a political space. Thats about the of power. And i think we ignore that politics at our peril. So one of the things i found most fascinating about this book, that it really documents the ways that the cook county has become a lot less transparent and accessible to the public since winston time. Theres so much on behind jail walls that is inaccessible, unknown to people on the outside. And theres this very striking photo in the from the 1950s in which a member of the press is interviewing a detained person, an uprising. And i think that could not write that we know that could not happen now. And so we know, you know, its almost impossible. Get cameras inside. Its hard to get members of the media inside on a good day. Let alone during a protest or a Hunger Strike or an uprising. So i was wondering if you could tell us a little bit that history of how the Cook County Jail became so much more opaque, how democratic access to the jail has been curtailed. Right. I mean, and this is its to say, you know, in the 1950s, the jail, a terrible place, right perpetual bedbugs are very bad food, very dangerous conditions. At the same time. There wasnt this kind of emphasis on security. And so people who were of the press could just come to the guard at the opening the jail and come in and walk around, interview people and get a sense of what was actually happening in there. And so for many of the the uprisings in the 1950s, in the 1960s, theres an incredible amount of detail in terms what people were demanding and why they were protesting. The conditions in the jail. Even there were interviews with people in the jail that are part of kind of early. Thats my son. But so, you know, there was a sense that in order to tell the full story of what was happening in the jail, you had to have the voices of the incarcerated people. And this, you know, kind of wanes various reasons. You know . Hans mattick was a former jail warden and a major collector of documents around the jail. He has this kind of note in his papers, the chicago history museum, that essentially is kind of like these people. He didnt think it was like its not a conspiracy that these people are kind of hoarding all this infamy. And he didnt even think they were collecting. He just thought that they were kind of stupid over time, though, we can that activists are document adding that they feel like theyve been lied to by administrators who supposed to be accountable for whats happening in the jail. The administrators are writing about this their own memoirs. You know, and over time and some this is due right to the kind of reduction in the numbers of the press in chicago. The jail just stops being a beat. And so, you know, we dont have journalists who have the connections to get access to the of the guards union. They dont even have those kind of connections. The suntimes cant even label the jail buildings correctly and their photos and theres this real kind capacity for controlling information about the jail when theres less kind of public interest, less accountability and really a you know, a greater effort from within the Sheriffs Office to control information about the jail. So right. Were seeing that there are major questions about spread of covid at the jail. People who have died of overdoses and questions about on unsafe water to drink in division and the press is running news stories about a program to do native plant gardening the jail so that there are more monarch butterfly. Right. And like i love gardening. I love native plants. But this is a human rights story thats being papered over. Its being greenwash. And so, you know we have to see this as a story about. Why, you know, its about power. This is a story about politics. But its easy to forget that. The press is not necessarily resourceful enough to understand what press releases are really doing. So in the beginning of the book, when winston comes into play, you describe jails and prisons. Having been in a i dont remember who said it about a permanent state of crisis. Right. And that he was kind of brought into writing things in and create order and given the widespread violence at the Cook County Jail. Right. Weve seen 14 people to the point you just raised, 14 people have died since january first behind bars in the Cook County Jail. Deaths across the country in jails at Fulton County. Right. We saw someone this year eaten alive by bedbug in the Fulton County jail at rikers, which is just a spiraling seems like an endless deadly emergency at rikers. It doesnt feel so far away from that idea of a permanent state of all these years later. So what do you make of that . Yeah, i mean, this is the demoralizing part of being a jail historian is that, you want to end the book on no. You you would hope that things are getting getting better. But i think this is part of its the state of crisis is the why of why we have jails. Right. These are not the places where we invest our greatest hopes of first society. These are our most cynical institutions is this is where we organize the abandonment of the most people in our society. This is we, you know, a abandoned hope that people can change or that we can build a society that is inspired enough to to appeal to peoples better angels. And so, you know, we look at Fulton County or we look at rikers or we look at cook county. In terms of the like how do we deal with these institutions actions . And and what do we demand from them . I think we have to ask why people are so invested in the continued existence and of jails as a form of social control and as a form of racial control. Because the one thing you run into when you say, why do we have jails at all is somebody says we need them. And i think we have to interrogate that because people the history that i didnt always believe, the necessity of jails, they didnt always associate jails with the capacity to prevent crime. These new ideas and new inventions and new ways of thinking about jail that we can challenge and push back against as we think about what kind of society that we want to live in. One aspect of the book that i find interesting is, the stories of jail people resisting oppression themselves. Tell us a little bit about that history of incarcerated people and their efforts to resist and shape the conditions in the jail. Right. I mean, one of the things that i found just so profound again and again is that jail were just consistently innovating ways to draw attention to what they were expiring saying. Right. Whether they were writing letters to public officials, to people, Martin Luther king asking for their support. Whether they were smuggling out letters and other kinds of documentation of the conditions that they were experiencing, whether they were going on Hunger Strike or having scale food fights, because of the immense frustration that they felt in how they were being treated every day. You know, even just to there were kind of moments when you would find jokes being interviewed by state investigators who were coming to look at the jail. And they would just say weve been sleeping on floor without blankets, you know, for days were for so cold and dont necessarily think of that as a political act. Right. That doesnt feel like attica. But at the same time, those of testimony of asserting that things could be better, that they could be treated with more dignity, that there could be more attention to their not just their rights, but their humanity. I think those are really powerful moments to sit with and for us to as we think about our own kind of political culture, to ask ourselves, why are we not hearing more about this . Because thats still but its about the extent to which people can find a for those demands. And its tied up in this conversation about. Good intentions, right. Youve that throughout the history of the jail, there have been reformers whove had good had at least by their own assessment intentions trying to advance an agenda of reform perhaps to create more humane conditions or more for employment and that over and over again those efforts have gone astray or gone awry. Can you talk a little bit about. Or how do you see that playing out now . I mean, this is, you know, one of the stories that really this home to me was the story, john whitman, who at the turn of the 19th to 20th century was a very famous progressive era jail warden. And hes, you know, one of the first people saying, like, maybe there should education in jail, maybe we should give somebody, you know, things people something to do while theyre in jail. And hes really lauded for these reforms. But the people hes holding up is the the best of his of what jail can do. Are black people saying that these people are as happy in jail as if they had been born . Right. And really saying that jail being in the jail is actually better for than being free and and so, again, when we look to these programs today, you know, people in jail learning how to make or learning how to keep bees or or farm monarch butterflies, you know, we have to say this, isnt the full picture. This doesnt fully represent what day to day life is like in the jail. And actually, when we focus on these kinds of programs without attention to the conditions in the jail, we run the risk of really ignoring the gravest kind of human rights abuses in these places. Thanks. So it seems like were living through another pretty significant moment of, political backlash, right . Youre about the way local politics has shaped mass incarceration. And im thinking about how were seeing this massive right wing backlash in response to, the antiracist. Uprisings of 2020. Right. Were seeing across the country. Right. We saw a right wing effort to unseat former District Attorney chase in san francisco. All returned to tough on crime rhetoric being to expand jailing across united states. I wonder what history tells us about how to organize in these times during a period reaction. Right. I mean, i think one of the messages that no action is too small right. You know, whether it is. Writing a letter to a jailed, whether it is calling county commissioner or an alder person to ask them to, look into whats going on at the jail. You know, whether its going to volunteer with Chicago Community jails, support provide people with snack cakes and bus fare and other kind of resources. Theyre being released from the jail. Theres so many things that people can do to show they care about what happens in jail. And i think with the kind of a large groundswell of more attention to, the jail right there can be greater there can be that kind of cultural. I really do feel hopeful. People can assert a sense that they care about the humanity, people in jail as a kind, countercultural response to. You know, the radicalism, this political repression and the way that jails are used for it. Right. So you know, again, in atlanta, seeing protesters are trying to stop the construction of a Police Training center there are have been jailed as a way kind of try and criminalize them. Right. Associate them with the worst of the worst in society. And so we can use these moments to really reflect on. Our jails, doing kind of what they say theyre doing and what other ways are they being used in the political system to kind of assert forms of power . Tell us about some of the activist organizers you write about in the book who are working around the Cook County Jail . Yeah, i mean, this was one of the really exciting things to me in the past, finding that groups like the league of women voters, a largely suburb and kind of general issue organization that cared about accountability and oversight and local government was very attentive to jail conditions. There were people that one woman, charlotte senekal she was touring the jail basically the 1950s till she was in her nineties in the mid 1990s. People who saw that if youre going to have good government, you have to Pay Attention to whats happening. The jail because its the most revealing about kind of where all the cracks this democratic system are. I was i was in order to find feminist organizations, Racial Justice organizations, Small Community student groups, high schoolers, guys outside protesting the conditions in the jail at various points. I think the the notion this has happened that that mass incarceration has because of political neglect that is completely false. Right. One of the the kind of the upsides of this story is it shows the ways that mass incarceration was constrained and limited and reduce it both in terms of the extent of the violence and the number of people who are incarcerated, concerned citizens, paid attention to what was happening, the jail and demanded better. So i do think we can look to these stories of kind of, everyday people who cared about things like corruption. Political accountability. She said, we have Pay Attention to whats happening in the jail. I think that can be a kind of source of inspiration right on. I think were going pause here and take questions from the audience. Are there folks want to show their hands. And please do come up to the microphone. Okay. Hi. Thank you for a very informative presentation. I just moved to chicago from oklahoma and i wanted to you a question about jail geography. I just moved here and i dont know where the Cook County Jail is. We have a lot of jail. Jail activism on behalf of jail people because Oklahoma City, you drive past the Oklahoma City jail every day. You know where it is horrible things happen there, but its visible to as a site of awareness. You see the jail does where the Cook County Jail located. And is that was it moved . Is that part of the reason why excessive ability and you know newspaper interest in the jail. Could you just tell me that as a newcomer to the city. I was so grateful that question. So the jail is at 26 in california of over on the west side. You can take the pink line over there. Its a little bit of hike from the l, but can be done. About a hundred years ago there was a question of where a new jail would be built. They needed a larger facilities than they had downtown and. A businessman, the jail out of out of the loop. And so they moved the county jail next to the city jail, which at that time was the chicago house of correction. So the county acquired the land from the city, and they these two jails side by side with like literally a wall between until the late sixties when they were merged and people the 1920s said, if you this jail five miles away from, the center of the city its going be hard for lawyers to access. Its going to be hard for peoples families to get to them. Its going to be difficult for. People have the jail kind of top of mind. And i think its telling right. Just down the street is the federal jail, which was built in response to conditions at Cook County Jail. Cook county jail was just too dangerous to house federal. But whenever people talk about like, oh, you write about the jail in chicago, the one the one in the loop that were triangle shaped, one, its like no. And so theres this sense of kind of out of sight of mind, i think, becomes really important to how we think about again, like, yeah, just how accessible politically these spaces are. Because they can kind of just operate on the margins. Sheriff tom dart has been talked about as a reformer from what youre saying, the conditions at Cook County Jail are large, the same as they have been. Do you see a an improvement in recent years, especially under sheriff dart . You know so as a historian, im always going to be really really reticent about a progress narrative. Right. And how do you measure reform how do you measure progress . And so, you know, one of the things i will often say is that a major change from like the sixties to now is people are not set on fire as frequently as they used to be in the jail. Right. People are not necessary shackled to beds and left in their own feces in a hallway. Thats an improved Cook County Jail. 40 years was under a consent where there was federal monitoring of the jail. Dart was able to improve enough to get to get released from that. The jail the size of the jails population has been reduced by, you know, as a result of massive advocacy. The community for accountability from the courts. So the extent to which dart is responsible for any of that. You know, a, there are a lot of kind of different, i think, angles that you could take to try to measure it. But my sense is that if one person is dying in the jail, you have a grave problem and you cant really measure against is it better than it used to be because that person is dead and the comparison doesnt matter to them or doesnt matter their family. 14 people this year and and you know i didnt ask you this earlier, but i am curious if you want to talk about the kind of response got when from the sheriffs when you started working on this project. Yeah. I mean, so this is kind of another angle to, the story, right. And theres not a definitive answer in terms of like is dart a reformer is the job better . You know i was initially told ten years ago that there were no historical sources available from the Sheriffs Office about the jail that they had nothing. When i was finishing the book they kind of hinted like if i would play nice that this might be on offer. And i, i really was, i guess, shocked in my interactions with the Sheriffs Office. And they sent me out. How does it they were to be told that they were doing a good job because this was during the of the peak of covid when something 20 people had died in the jail a year. And i really felt like if you are a if you truly believe in the value of human life, then youre not looking for praise from some historian who lives in connecticut. Right. Youre in your own jail doing the right thing, trying to protect human life with the that you have. And so to me, its not the question of like is is dart some great reform here but i would say why is he so invested in maintaining a jail where 90 of the population, black or latino right . Why does he never challenge the quality of the jail . Why is he not demanding, as he has at other times in his tenure, a greater access, things Like Mental Health care in the community as a way to reduce the jail population. So i think even if we were to evaluate dart, we couldnt say, has he consistently been a great reformer . That has changed just hes been sheriff for quite a while. Are there other questions, sir. Thank for your work. Im a professor at western illinois university. Its in mccomb for our southwest to hear. There are three state prisons within 45 minutes of the small town and a great many of the are africanamericans who live in chicago. I know because i give a talk during black History Month and everyone tells me who they are right that was killed. Covid has not come back. My question is to part one is cook county. Any decent education work for inmates and to do you know the education narrative is so strong right. Oh we could educate people, but we appreciate that. Somewhat false, right . Like education doesnt solve every problem. Do you even think that these sorts of programs should be sort of prioritized prisons or some other ways in order to improve the lives and futures of inmates . Yeah. I mean, i think its a question of scale. And and again, what you want the institution do. Like, yes, i would for people to have Education Programs so that they have access to the ability to think about anything else other than being in jail. Right. One of the powerful kind of sources that i came across were the poems women wrote in Educational Programs in the seventies in which they were finding kind of ways to to tolerate being in the situation of great suffering suffering. I think educators are often people who are in touch with this sense of the of their students and can do things that are can treat people in a way that affirms their dignity and supports their theyre for their own rights and dignity but its not point of jail because most people in jail today are people who are awaiting trial. Theyre not guilty of anything they dont need to be rehabilitated because we dont know if theyre guilty and they havent had their day in court. And so, you know, i think for jails specifically and thats the that theyre different than prisons im a little bit reticent in any kind of emphasis on that doesnt focus on say like access to a law library the access to Legal Support and defense, things that will help people as they try to deal with their cases cases. You know, another kind of of the education story that we have to, i think, is to what extent are these programs being used to try and maintain order in jails. And and again, it kind of comes back to like could someone be doing these things outside of jail and be better served. Right. When we talk about things like ged programs or teaching people how to read in jail, those are good things. Do you really need to be in jail to become literate . Thats kind of a bigger question. Okay. Well, theres always more to discuss here. This is a big that every question that was asked could have led to its own hour long conversation. I want to say thank you, melanie, for being here with us. This is an importa