Prison Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

The Ostriches: Part IV

“Forty to a clockless cell”

February 6, 2026 • by Val Vinokur

THE OSTRICHES: PART IV, 26 FEDERAL PLAZA Leonardo’s first inventions were machinesTo tear the bars off windows and openA prison from inside. He escaped the gibbetAnd the stake and wandered the marketBuying caged birds to set free. Every sketchAnd painting an endless draft for a pictureOf the mind in its movement, infinite. He ...

Uncategorized

Nikolas Cruz and Death Penalty Mitigation

Why the Parkland High School shooter tells a bigger story about the path to becoming a murderer

August 26, 2022 • by Janet Golden

People who needed help—intervention, services, resources, did not get it. Systems meant to aid them failed, or could not do so, because of underfunding and bureaucratic eligibility rules that excluded them....

Prisons and Police

Behind Bars in the Age of Coronavirus

A letter from prison

June 18, 2020 • by Phyllis Dietrichson

Is it wise or exploitative? My “soap shop” job is part of a difficult matrix of concepts. On the one hand, I am grateful to have the opportunity to work and contribute to the cause. On the other, I feel expendable and like a slave. But then again, I once ...

Feature

Tonya Harding, Prison Book Bans, and the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal

Past Present Episode 115

January 28, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Natalia, and Niki debate Tonya Harding’s comeback, book bans in prison, and the 20th anniversary of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal.

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Tonya Harding, Prison Book Bans, and the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal

Feature

Life Sentences

Opening remarks from the Conference on Incarceration and the Humanities

November 30, 2017 • by N. D. B. Connolly

Now, you could imagine the horrors of a colonial prison in a black, economically depressed country like 1930s Jamaica, just as you can imagine the nightmare that the sound of wailing men might conjure in the mind of a nine-year old child like my grandfather. Even the most benign administrative ...