Prison Radio Audio Feed

My name is Tabitha. Um, I am 20 years into a 24-year sentence for second degree murder and weapons felony, crowded in at Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ysiplianti, Michigan—the only women's state prison in Michigan. Now the powers that be will say we are not overcrowded at all, that in fact Michigan now has the lowest prison population it has had in three decades. Which is true: we are no longer stacked on top of each other in every old office, closet, and storage room they could pack multiple bunk beds into But what they will not tell you is that we are still over twice the amount of women in this facility that it was originally designed and built to hold, which brings me to the parole process. First, as a nation, we lock up way too many of our own citizens. We have criminalized being poor, mentally ill, and- and a minority. We have created laws that specifically target these groups and turn them into the only legal slaves our Constitution still allows. The prison system of our nation, our big