Incarceration: A Podcast for Change

Broadcasting the social costs of incarceration

Incarceration: A Podcast for Change preserves, reframes, and disseminates audio content from the States of Incarceration initiative developed by the Humanities Action Lab (HAL) in 2015-16. Students at The New School and other partner institutions created content in support of a traveling exhibit (ongoing) and related community outreach. This material explored specific incarceration histories (such as the debate over the continuance of Riker’s Island) as well as the broad history, themes and issues related to incarceration, including the growing landscape of movements designed to alter policy and examine the human and social costs of imprisonment. The relevant audio content includes interviews, field recordings, performance elements, and public panels and debates.

Incarceration: A Podcast for Change brings the issues related to incarceration, and the subjects, themes, and discoveries made by the HAL project, to the attention of a national audience. The podcast format allows for diverse and divergent content to be shaped as compelling narratives in three pilot programs.In addition to reaching a wider audience, work on the pilot programs for the podcast engages a new group of students and shareholders.

The podcast will engage HAL’s institutional partners (some twenty universities participated in the original project) and re-purposed content can also be used in teaching and community outreach. Podcasting is proving to be a potent tool for extending the reach of social, civic and artistic communities, and creating loyal, engaged audiences.

In addition, podcast content can be shared and embedded across many digital platforms, so that the resulting programs can be re-committed as components local exhibitions, and can extend the reach of the project into other online environments.