In the first part of this two-part series, I shared five podcasts that are entirely about criminal justice reform and related issues. In this article, I will suggest individual episodes from other podcasts that are relevant to the criminal justice reform topic.

Some of the recommended episodes are from podcasts that regularly cover these issues; others are “one-off” episodes from podcasts that don’t normally cover them. Either way, all of these recommended podcast episodes are potentially useful resources for students preparing to debate the criminal justice reform topic.

This is not a comprehensive list; there are many more episodes from many other podcasts that students might find helpful when researching criminal justice reform-related topics. When curating this list, I focused heavily on episodes about prison and police abolition and on episodes from the last few weeks.

General

• Deconstructed — “How to Fix the Criminal (In)Justice System: With John Legend and Patrisse Cullors” (February 13, 2020)
• The New Yorker Radio Hour — “Mass Incarceration, Then and Now” (January 17, 2020)

Abolition

• The Ex-Worker — “Prisoner Solidarity, COVID-19, and Anti-Police Rebellion” (June 11, 2020)
• Intercepted — “Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes the Case for Abolition” (June 10, 2020)
• The Ex-Worker — “Minneapolis Uprising, Part 1—How to Abolish the Police” (June 10, 2020)
• The Ezra Klein Show — “A former prosecutor’s case for prison abolition” (June 8, 2020)
• What’s Left? — “Police Brutality & State Violence (w/ Malcom Kyeyune)” (June 4, 2020)
• Lives of the Mind — “Searching for Freedom from the Prison Industrial Complex- Dr. Yusef Salaam” (March 30, 2020)
• Hella Black Podcast — “Abolishing the Prison Industrial Complex (Feat Mariame Kaba)” (February 6, 2020)
• Deep Background with Noah Feldman — “Criminal Justice Reform and The Abolition of Prisons” (May 12, 2019)
• Making Contact — “The Future of Abolition: Marc Lamont Hill, Michelle Alexander and Vonya Quarles” (January 30, 2019)
• The New Yorker Radio Hour — “What Would a World Without Prisons Be Like?” (January 24, 2020)
• What’s Left? — “Abolish the Police” (January 7, 2020)
• Srsly wrong — “Prisons must be abolished” (October 1, 2019)
• Why Is this Happening? With Chris Hayes — “Thinking about how to abolish prisons with Mariame Kaba” (April 10, 2019)
• This Is Hell! — “Abolition or reform at the edge of carceral reconfiguration?” (March 23, 2019)
• The Activist Files — “Episode 12: Transformative justice in an era of mass criminalization, Mariame Kaba and Victoria Law” (March 14, 2019)
• News Beat — “Is Prison Abolition Possible?” (December 20, 2018)
• Intercepted — “A Judicial Coup, the Carceral State, and the War Against Us All” (Mariame Kaba’s segment) (July 11, 2018)
• Intercepted — “There’s Something About Jared” (Mariame Kaba’s segment about the history of prisons) (May 31, 2017)
• This Is Hell! — “On freeing ourselves: The politics of police and prison abolition” (May 20, 2017)
• AirGo — “Episode 29 – Mariame Kaba” (February 2, 2016)
• The Ex-Worker — “Prison Abolition and Community Accountability” (August 25, 2013)

Policing

• Deconstructed — “Is It Time to Defund the Police?” (June 11, 2020)
• Can He Do That? — “Public sentiment on police reform has shifted dramatically. Will it matter?” (June 11, 2020)
• Today, Explained — “Can Congress reform the police?” (June 10, 2020)
• Deep Background with Noah Feldman — “The Barriers to Reform” (June 10, 2020)
• The Weeds — “After George Floyd” (June 9, 2020)
• The Daily — “The Case For Defunding the Police” (June 9, 2020)
• The Neoliberal Podcast — “Reforming the Police ft. Jennifer Doleac, Jamein Cunningham & Bocar Ba” (June 9, 2020)
• The Weeds — “Defund the police?” (June 5, 2020)
• Deep Background with Noah Feldman — “A Top Obama Official on Police Brutality” (June 2, 2020)

Other Specific Topics

• Deep Background with Noah Feldman — “Prisons and Jails Are a Coronavirus Time Bomb” (March 24, 2020)
• Intercepted — “The Case of Rodney Reed” (November 13, 2019)
• Intercepted — “Running for Justice: the Public Defenders Looking to Transform the Role of District Attorney” (June 12, 2019)
• Intercepted — “American Dystopia: The State, Surveillance, and Illusion of Choice“(April 3, 2019)

If you would like to recommend a podcast episode that isn’t on my list, please post it in the comments below. If and when I accumulate a list of additional podcast episodes to recommend, I’ll post a new article.