‘The Alabama Department of Corrections is a drug cartel’

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. In this country, we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness according to the Constitution. But in this country also, we have legalized slavery under the 13th Amendment. To understand what legalized slavery is, institutionalized slavery is, all you have to do is look to Alabama and the Alabama prison system. The prison industrial complex in Alabama is one of the most notorious systems in this country, I would even venture to say in the world. Join me today is Matthew Whalan. Matthew wrote a book called Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison. Thank you for joining us today, Matthew.

Matthew Whalan:

Thank you for having me.

Mansa Musa:

Alright, so we was talking off camera about some of this, right? Tell our audience, first of all, what is Bullock?

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah. Bullock is a prison in Union Springs, Alabama built in 1987 during a time when federal litigation against Alabama’s prison system, somewhat similar to what we’re seeing now, had fizzled out. And again, just sort of like we’re seeing now. The main takeaway that, and really the only thing the Alabama state government did to address its chronic overcrowding problem was to build new prisons. The first major prison opened in that time for that purpose was St. Clair Prison in 1983. So Bloc is opened in 1987 and it’s sort of in that same wave of prisons being open for that reason. Originally, Bullock was designed as in theory as a mental health facility, and my understanding is there’s one building on the property there that mainly deals with the most serious issues. But for the most part, Alabama’s prisons are so overcrowded that as one former officer told me in the book, they just sort of deal with their mental health issues all over the state. And Bullock, for example, has its design capacity is 919, and as of the writing of the book, there were 1,512 people in there.

Mansa Musa:

Before we dive deep into the book, do you know how many prisons exist in Alabama? What’s the state? Not so much federal. I know they got federal prisons as well, but state prison,

Matthew Whalan:

There are 12 and roughly depending on the year, between 20 and 25,000 prisoners.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. And how many of those prisons are maximum security?

Matthew Whalan:

Well, at this point it’s so overcrowded. This has been another,

Mansa Musa:

Don’t make no difference.

Matthew Whalan:

Another problem that has come up in much of the prison litigation against Alabama is they have no real classification system because of the overcrowding. So what the prisons were designed for and how many people they were designed for does not, there’s no real sense to it. And so I’ve often interviewed prisoners who were in for kidnapping and assault or murder, and the next day I’m interviewing somebody in the same dorm who is in there on all nonviolent drug charges.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right, right. Okay, so let’s talk about Bullock. Now, in the state of Maryland, this is a similar institution, the initial design of it or the intent being a medical criminal and saying or place in that genre or that era, because in Maryland they got what they had. They got an institution called Uck and ux. The way Rituxan was set up initially was that you get a civil commitment there. So when you went to court, I might go to court and I got felony murder. I got a murder. They sentenced me to protection. Alright, so I’m sentenced to protection. I don’t have no time. I don’t have, no, I’m just there until I complete the program. In the same vein, a person comes to court and they might have a nonviolent robbery, strong armed robbery, and they be sent to Texan. And when they’re sent to Rituxan, they get a civil commitment. That person, if they went straight to court, might get three years. When they get to Tusan, they wind up doing 20 years because they was given a civil commitment until they complete the program. On the same token, the person that was given the life sentence that had a murder, he might wind up doing five years. He completed the program. Now, according to what you were saying, I seen where you saying Bullock was initially designed for the criminal insane. In that vein, unpack how that came about.

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah, I don’t know much about how it was decided that Bullock would be a mental health facility. I just don’t know much about that. But what I do know is that most of the prisons that were open in that time, like St. CLA for example, was also supposed to have a bunch of open spaces that were built with the intention of being used as vocational and other recreational areas. And the overcrowding continued to be a problem such that within, I think less than a year, those spaces all had to be converted into areas to house more prisoners. And those prisons became overcrowded as well. So my understanding is that the purpose of Bullock, the same thing sort of happened with the Bullock being a mental health facility,

Mansa Musa:

But once it got the overcrowding changed the design of what the intent was. But let’s talk about

Matthew Whalan:

In 1981, the Department of Corrections own projection was that they would need a new prison that would cost $30 million to build and 600 to operate over its useful life. I believe in the 1981, they predicted they would need that through every year through 1990 and beyond. If they were going to keep up with the overcrowding by building new prisons. Those are just staggering numbers. There’s no way they could have ever done that.

Mansa Musa:

Right. Let’s talk about Bullock and how you came up with this particular method of conveying this information. So your approach was to interview people and get their stories, but not so much as everybody got the same story, but what their situation was under different circumstances. How’d you come about? Why’d you take that approach in terms of communicating what was going on in Bullock, why that particular approach? Each story is different. Each situation is different, but each one, when you look at the bigger picture, it sheds a light on the inhumanity that people are being subjected to primarily because they locked up.

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is just a journalistic impulse that I think when it comes to populations that are suffering more, a lot of journalists sort of forget that you’re supposed to talk to people on the ground about the thing that you’re covering. If there’s a story in my local paper about a drought, they’re going to interview farmers and stuff, people who are affected by it. But a lot of stories about things like prisons and prisoners and homelessness and homeless people, they’ll town officials, they’ll quote DOC officials, they’ll quote state officials, they’ll quote the police and they might even quote some people who are sympathetic, but they often don’t quote the prisoners themselves.

You’re writing a story about local business owners, you interview local business owners, but for some reason with more marginalized communities, that goes out the window. And also, so I think the people in the middle of it are always important to interview no matter what you’re writing about. And I also try to get as much corroboration as I can, both from multiple prisoners who maybe don’t know, I’m talking to both of them and as well as through the public record and other experts, and to verify as much of what I can that I’m being told with what’s available in the books and legal documents and journalism that I read.

Mansa Musa:

I was looking at in the intro how it was the description of how this cloud of silence comes over this environment. And I was thinking about when I was in Supermax in Maryland, the description was accurate and that regard when I was up in western part of Maryland, which was another maximum security, but when the sunset, because we in rural county, it like eerie silence came over to prison. It wasn’t nothing else going on, no movement, everything your senses was just say like, well, shut down. There’s nothing here that’s going to give you any type of sense of relief. And that’s how, in the introduction you described it, but talk about this one, this one person, and then you can unpack some of other cases where he was labeled homosexual. Obviously he had mental issues, but even he in an environment where the mental is the primary should be the primary focus. So that mean that the officers will be mindful that if a person coming to them and having episode, psychiatric episode that stand reason that they would have ’em go somewhere, get the type of treatment that they need in order to calm down and get control. In this case, they pretty much say like the hell what this particular prince Talk about that,

But that attitude because that attitude was prevalent throughout the book.

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah, I mean, part of it is just I think a culture of cruelty. And you’re right, even when people are threatening suicide or homicide officers will either ignore them and there’s multiple accounts of officers telling people to kill themselves. And also I do not to be too fair, but because there’s a lot of what’s going on is just completely criminal. But I would imagine that with the system so understaffed, I mean, I’ve interviewed guys who were both prisoners and former guards who were either imprisoned or working in Alabama prisons that had over a thousand people in them and fewer than 10 guards interviewed one former officer who recalled working a shift overnight with I think it was either three or four people total including himself. And I imagine, I’m speculating here, but I imagine that even if you’re not one of those guards who’s corrupt, the incentive to cut corners is probably pretty high. If you have three other people working with you and over a thousand prisoners and you discover one of those three people is dealing drugs, do you really want to be down to two people for that whole night? Are you even able to stop your day and do the paperwork that comes with that?

So yeah, so not to excuse any of what goes on, but I would imagine that there is a sort of institutional pressure on people who work there because they’re so understaffed and overworked and there’s mandatory overtime.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, because one guy said, he say that they caught him with a knife, he had it in his hand, he handed it to them, they said, man, I don’t want that. Threw it in the ground, kept it moving.

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah, he told them he just stabbed somebody too.

Mansa Musa:

And before that, at each interval he was trying to get something done that made sense. They resisted it. And when they told him he had was having seizures and everybody saying that, as soon as he responded having a seizure and kicked one of ’em, they beat him. They beat him but

Matthew Whalan:

Him while he was having a seizure.

Mansa Musa:

While he was having a seizure. But talk about that particular mentality because where’s the oversight from your investigation? Where’s the oversight in whole lot? Where’s the check and balance or it is no check and balance. Everybody had the same disposition. We overcrowded, we don’t have a lot of guards. So therefore,

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah, I mean I think

Mansa Musa:

Is that from your investigation, has that became the culture of the gods?

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah, I mean I think that all around these are pretty lawless societies and a lot of the order that is injected into them is really just from prisoners organizing themselves. And I mean even the whole functioning of the prison, the food, the laundry, just all kinds of jobs. There’s dorm reps, which there’s a question about how legal that is because there’s court orders from the past saying prisoners can’t be in positions of authority over other prisoners, but Alabama’s doing that. So everything that makes the prison run is either slave labor or outsourced, like the pest control is privatized own system is privatized, the construction is privatized, the food is privatized. So yeah, it’s all either slave labor or private corporations that make the prison run.

Mansa Musa:

You hit on point about how prisons delegate responsibility of running certain aspects of the prison in terms of maintaining order for the officers. Talk about that.

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah, I mean I think it’s really more maintaining order among themselves. I mean, so one thing is that I would say there’s a couple kinds of forced labor that are going on in Alabama. Three, if you count the work release program, since it’s coupled with such high rates of parole denial, but then there’s traditional, you’re assigned a job in prison and there’s consequences for not carrying it out.

That’s the basic forced labor. And then there’s also situations where the building is just so neglected and the system won’t send any help in that. Prisoners are pretty much forced to take matters into their own hands. So the plumbing system is a constant, the breakdown of the plumbing system is a constant theme throughout my book. It just keeps getting worse and worse. There’s sewage water flooding into dorms eventually, while the guys who I interviewed were not technically assigned this job, they were being denied cleaning supplies, they’re being denied outside help. This is the week of Christmas. They fed garbage bags over their arms and they started reaching as far as they could into the toilets to pull out whatever was in there

System just to try to relieve some pressure on it. Yeah, so nobody told them, this is your job. They actually took it on themselves in that situation, but nobody else was doing it and it was just going to keep causing more and more problems if nobody did anything. So there’s situations like that where it’s just like prisoners kind of have to take matters into their own hands, even if they’re not assigned a job. And then there’s a lot of them who are assigned jobs. And then there’s also the corrupting effects of the higher rates of parole denial on the work release program, which also has corrupting effects on the work release program because one of the major reasons to participate in it is the incentive. You’ll get out one day, but if there’s a 80 something percent chance you won’t get out, then

Mansa Musa:

What’s

Matthew Whalan:

The point? They’re taking all your money anyways.

Mansa Musa:

And regard to that, from what I understand, if you work on work release, you’re paying rent, you’re paying transportation,

Matthew Whalan:

Transportation, you’re

Mansa Musa:

Paying for your uniform, anything relative to the job that’s associated with the job is the money associated with it you are paying for, but how much money, where’s the money going at from when the state is allocating money for the prison system? Where’s that money going? A

Matthew Whalan:

Lot of it goes to lawsuits. There’s a great journalist named Beth Shelburn who just discovered that the state of Alabama has spent, I don’t want to get the number wrong, I think it’s 50 million in five years just on lawsuits to protect guards and presumably other people in the system working in the system. So that’s a big part of it. And then also they, they’re putting it in, they’re trying to put it into building new prisons and just keep doing that. They’re trying to open more mega prisons. They’ve tried to divert COVID relief funds to building new mega prisons, and they say that’s to address the overcrowding. But the last time I checked on that plane plan, they were planning to close four other prisons at the same time, which is long overdue. Those prisons are

Mansa Musa:

Falling apart,

Matthew Whalan:

So it’s not going to address overcrowding. And they keep denying people parole and they won’t change their sentencing laws. So they’re just trying to keep pace with a system that is guaranteed to be overcrowded the way that it is. And you’re not keeping pace very well either.

Mansa Musa:

And from your investigation, this is the culture in Alabama, why is this culture so consistent and hasn’t been shut down?

Matthew Whalan:

That’s a great question. Parts of the answer to that question are probably not super unique to Alabama. But to go through some of the post civil war history, there’s a great book on this by the historian Douglas Blackman called Slavery by another name, which is about forced labor in Alabama from the end of the Civil War up to World War ii, which in the late 19th, early 20th century, there was a DOJ prosecutor named Warren Reese. The DOJ was getting a lot of complaints of slavery taking place in the Civil War, or sorry, after the Civil War in Alabama. And this Justice Department prosecutor, who was actually a fairly conservative person, I think his father had fought on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War. But nonetheless, he started looking into these, he started investigating these claims, and sure enough, he found that people that Alabama, not just Alabama, it was particularly bad in Alabama, had implemented a series of bogus laws to pick up poor people who were in Alabama. In over 90% of the cases were black people charged them with things like vagrancy, which just meant being suspected of not having a job.

There were also sort of almost like those old timey laws you hear about, but were introduced. Then there’s one that says you can’t sell corn on the train tracks come down. Just random things like that.

They would pick these people up. They would have sham trials that were often conducted by a local justice of the peace, and they would be held in debt bondage, presumably for their crime. And then once they were in bondage, it was easy for whoever’s holding them to make up some reason that they did something else and need to be held longer. And they were also treated as, some people argue even more disposably, because there was no investment in them. It was presumed they’d be had for six months to two years. So they were just sent to die in the coal mines, essentially. And when Warren Reese starts successfully prosecuting these cases, one of the early people who was found guilty or was convicted of it, basically figured out through the law that he could plead guilty, pay like a thousand dollars fine, and then just no jail time. And he’d keep practicing it. And Warren Reese kept prosecuting these cases, but he hit this wall where once people figured that out

Mansa Musa:

How to get around,

Matthew Whalan:

They just kept taking the fine. And so that continued through up through the early 20th century. You have other iterations of it, like sharecropping. The last iteration of it really in that form is chain gangs. And then under FDR, I think to avoid propaganda from other countries. As we were preparing for war, not out of the goodness of his heart, he had his Department of justice really start prosecuting these cases as slavery cases rather than debt bondage cases. And after that, I would argue is where you really see a shift in slave labor being outsourced in the way that we’re used to. We’re seeing a huge experience of that with Alabama’s work release program. But I think for the most part now, the slave labor is really used to maintain the institutions in which the people are imprisoned. And in a place like Alabama where the system is so overcrowded and understaffed and they don’t want to put any more money into it, unless it means putting money into making it worse, that is a huge problem. Alabama’s system is forced to support itself. And so there’s a huge incentive for Alabama to use slave labor.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. We talk about that right there because as you unpack the history, which is correct, what we find ourselves here in this day and age is a system that’s set up where the whole design of the system is for the purpose of slave labor. Every entity that goes into the system that is supposed to be for reform don’t exist. Every entity that in the system that’s for adequate medical treatment don’t exist. Every entity about food don’t exist. My point, my question is how are they getting away with it? How are they getting, because talk about people that you talk to and when they talk to you about the effect of not being able to get parole, the impact it had on them and their thinking.

Matthew Whalan:

Well, there’s sort of two questions in there. I guess I’ll take the last one first. How does it impact their thinking that they won’t get parole?

Mansa Musa:

Yeah,

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah. I mean, one thing is that, first of all, we can just start with people who don’t have the possibility of parole. They are notoriously more problematic according to the other prisoners because it’s sort of understandable. What’s the point of rehabilitation? If you’re just going to be continually punished for the rest of your life? I definitely would not be at my best in that situation. So that’s one part at the very basic level is often it’s said that by other prisoners that the prisoners who don’t have parole are often more violent and reckless. And also in Alabama, this is not the only state that’s like this. I’ve even interviewed prisoners who got parole and they had to stay in, I’m sure I didn’t realize this until I started working on this stuff. It’s just something I hadn’t thought about. It hadn’t occurred to me that you could be on parole in prison, you can be granted parole, but they won’t release you if you don’t have a place to go. You can have been given your right to walk out and still be held in the prison. Yeah. But in general, it’s really sad. I mean, it’s an over 80, I think it’s around 85% parole denial, and

There’s no way all these people deserve that. I’ve interviewed guys who’ve been in for 10, 20, 30 years on all nonviolent crimes. I’ve interviewed guys. I interviewed, I mean, I have one source who was convicted as in his name is Milton Jones. I think I mentioned him off camera. He was convicted as a 15-year-old illiterate child with no parents in the state for a crime. He claims he didn’t commit, and there seems to be some evidence he didn’t commit the crime. And that was in 1982, and he’s still in there 44 years. And it’s just breathtaking. There’s no words for it. There’s no way you should treat a child like that. That’s sick.

Mansa Musa:

And then talk about the lack of oversight, because I think our audience, when they hear this interview, they’re going to be asking themselves, okay, this is going on. But it got to be somebody saying, stop. It got to be somewhere. Some state legislate somebody saying, stop somebody holding somebody, people accountable talk about the oversight under lack of thereof.

Matthew Whalan:

Well, I think at this point, unless the DOJ, unless there’s any success in the d OJ lawsuits, which I’m not ruling out, I actually think there’s a strong chance Alabama will refuse to settle and then lose in court because they have a very bad case. And then the question becomes, if they do lose in court, how is it enforced?

Mansa Musa:

Exactly.

Matthew Whalan:

There’s a problem that comes up in Larry Yacks book. He’s a lawyer who wrote the legal history of that decade of litigation in the eighties. If they continue to refuse to cooperate, I mean, I guess eventually you can start holding people in contempt of court and finding them every day. If that fails, you can put ’em in jail. But if that fails, what do you do next? That’s your last

Mansa Musa:

Part. And that’s the problem. And that’s the problem with the Alabama system. Come on.

Matthew Whalan:

Oh, yeah. And so I would just say for now, we are the oversight. I don’t have any tricks for how I’m not an organizer and I don’t have a magic bullet that if you do this, it’ll fix it. But we are the oversight. I think it’s up to us. Unless and until the federal government does something, it’s up to the people to keep the pressure on because nobody’s doing it for us. And so in that sense, until we do that, the reason they’re getting away with it is because we’re letting them.

Mansa Musa:

So talk about in terms of morelock and what was the most shocking story or interview you did in compiling this chronicle?

Matthew Whalan:

If

Mansa Musa:

You had to add off of one?

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s a hard question. One thing I’ll say, I think I mentioned this off air, is that the reason I wrote the book about Bullock, and perhaps I should have stated this more explicitly in the book, is not because it’s special, but because it’s such a good example of what is rampant in these prisons. But to answer your question, sometimes it’s not the most shocking thing that moves me the most. Sometimes it’s just the way that somebody tells their stories, just the way people capture things. And also people have been in so long, it grew up often in very rough childhoods. I find that they are really articulate and intelligent in a very organic way. These are very smart, sensitive people and just adds to the thought of what we’re depriving ourselves of our society of by keeping them in there. But also, I have one guy who said, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote in front of me, but he said something like, I stopped counting the days and the months and the years because it’s too painful. I don’t want to know how long it’s been anymore. And instead, I’ve been counting the number of times I’ve been stabbed,

And that prisoner has been stabbed 42 times, separate incidents. I feel lucky to have met him.

Mansa Musa:

And that right there, that’s the part of this story about Bullock. But like you say, it is not just unique to Bullock, but it is unique to Alabama telling you I indeed time. I did a lot of time and I did time where they had, police would just jump on you randomly. But over the years, that changed because the oversight legislative got involved. Laws was changed suits. But in Alabama, it is almost as if in the documentary Alabama solution, when the Justice Department came in and cited Alabama for being a violation of the eighth Amendment, cruel and unusual punishment, the governor, I say Alabama and the attorney general say Alabama said, oh, this not a justice department. They can’t come and tell us this is an Alabama solution. And was basically saying that we going to deal with this the way we want to deal with it. Forget what the Justice Department, when you got that kind of arrogance and belligerence coming out of the state, how do you see people getting relief when you find, like you say, a person been stabbed multiple times or he stopped counting the hopelessness that come from this environment. Can you speak on that?

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah. I mean, how does somebody get relief?

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. Because the lawsuit like, okay, they filed lawsuits. They get judgment. Okay, you get money. You’re not getting released, and you not only not getting released, but the conditions not changing. So, and

Matthew Whalan:

They’ll probably reject your lawsuit anyways.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, conditions ain’t changed. And so now I got a lot of money to buy fentanyl.

Matthew Whalan:

I mean, from my perspective, just because I don’t really know what else to do. I think one of the paths towards relief is organizing and support of the prisoners and just keeping the pressure on, keeping the message out there. The question of whether to rebel is a constant theme. Throughout my book. There’s always this tension where the prisoners are deciding like, okay, is today the day that they made it bad enough? And I would never encourage or discourage anybody in that position, not my place, but I would support anybody’s action who does? And I think that change can come from that. I covered the strike that came up in the documentary,

And I covered the aftermath of the strike as well. And prisoners were understandably disappointed that they went through so much and not very much had changed. And there’s even some evidence that the state retaliated against them for it and made things worse. And I know there’s no way for me to tell the prisoners that they should appreciate this, but I know that it does. It did have an effect on those lawsuits. Another lawsuit was launched after they pulled the strike after a riot in 2016. I don’t support violent action, but after a riot in 2016, they did shut down part of home in prison where it took place on the back end of that, and home in prison had a lot of problems, was dangerous for sanitary, something happened. These actions don’t go nowhere. But yeah, if you’re someone who’s interested in this stuff, I think the best thing we can do to help is just be involved in any way we can on the outside, write people letters, send people books, put people in touch with people who might care about them and write letters. Do whatever you can. I mean, it’s hard. I mean, one thing, I can’t remember which part of your question this was relevant to, but you mentioned Derek earlier. Another thing about Derek is he’s got a lot of problems he didn’t have before prison. He’s got a TBI he didn’t have before prison. He’s got HIV, Hep C.

Yeah, he’s suicidal, he’s now committed violent acts. None of those things were true of him until after he went to prison.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, after he went to Alabama prison.

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah. And also you mentioned how Alabama being the worst. Just a couple points on that. Alabama, according to their prison policy initiative, they imprisoned per capita more of their citizens than any democratic nation on earth.

Mansa Musa:

Right

Matthew Whalan:

Now, I’m skeptical of how any institution is defining what a democratic nation is. But numbers, that’s a wild number. They’ve got the highest suicide rates, the highest murder rates, the highest overdose rates in the country. And it’s saying a lot because there’s plenty of states that compete for a claim to be the worst. And Alabama is really, there’s a lot, a lot of close seconds. But Alabama is a distant first

Mansa Musa:

Hands down when you have a prison system that monetize the labor, outsource it to corporations, use it for political capital, get donations towards running from office when you got an institution that his whole intent is to profit where you have, and we ain’t even talking about this, the corrupt officers, the number of the fentanyl, the amputees, people psychologically damaged, and this is the norm of the system. It’s not unusual to find coming to the prison and say, is it drugs? Yeah. Is it rampant rape? Yeah. Is it knives everywhere? Yeah. Is it corruption? Yeah. Is it there anything that can help me get out rehabilitation programs that give me a sense of hope and value? No. So as we close out and you hit on this, what do you think when we look back on this story, what do you think we going to be at next year? Is we going to be looking at the mega prisons being built out? Are we going to be looking at maybe just maybe the Justice Department or somebody came in and had the power to enforce the Constitution upon down these people’s throats?

Matthew Whalan:

Yeah, that’s a great question. I love the way you asked that question. I mean, well, let me first, I’ll touch on the officer. As you mentioned. I did want to mention that I think it’s hard for people to grasp, but the Alabama Department of Corrections is bordering on being a drug cartel. I mean, this is massive. I should just call them a drug cartel call me, Alabama Department of Corrections is a drug cartel. This is massive large scale drug dealing, and it’s widespread. One officer told the Alabama Appleseed, he put his kids through college dealing drugs in prison. So yeah, and they have created a lawless society in which to operate, in which to pursue their corruption. Alabama prisons are completely lawless at this point. And where are we going to be in a year from now? Again, I would reiterate, I think part of the answer to that question is up to us. Part of the answer to your question depends on whether the trial happens, whether the court case is gotten through with in 2026 that might make a difference. That might change the answer to your question depending on what happens there. But also it might not, Alabama might lose and still refuse to change. It would not be their first time.

Mansa Musa:

No.

Matthew Whalan:

So again, I would just say that I don’t know what it will look like in a year. I think if I’m just trying to say most likely it will continue to be as bad as it is in getting worse. But we have a say in the answer to that question. It doesn’t have to be that way. And if it is going to be bad and keep getting worse, we should at the very least, have constant solidarity and communication with and support for these prisoners, so at least they know they’re not alone, and there’s people fighting for ’em out here, and they’re not just being left to fight for themselves or languish.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. Thank you, and we appreciate this book. Matthews, we want to say to our audience as we close out, first of all, I’m going to all give you the opportunity to tell ’em how they can get in touch with you and encourage them to whatever encouragement you want to give our own audience in relations to this story.

Matthew Whalan:

Sure, sure. Yeah. You can find me on hard times reviewer do substack.com. My name is Matthew Vernon Whalen. My book is called Bullock Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison, and you can direct message me on Substack if you want to get in touch, if you want more information about anything, if you want to become a pen pal with a prisoner who would want that. If you want any information about anything I’ve written or spoken about, reach out to me anytime I try to respond to everybody,

Mansa Musa:

We want to encourage our audience to do what he just said, reach out to ’em and get some information. But more important, we want our audience to understand that this is Alabama now, but it could be Maryland tomorrow. It could be Texas the day after. It could be anywhere in the United States where a state has monetized slavery to the extent where nobody has oversight, that everybody is profiting off of the misery and suffering of human beings. We’re not talking about animals. We’re talking about people living human beings that only crime is they was convicted of a crime. That was their punishment. The punishment is I gave you 20 years. The punishment is not to be sent to Bullock and be deprived of all my rights as a human being. The punishment is punishment. How much time I was given.

The obligation of the state is for them to create a system where I can change and come back to society, a whole human being. As everybody stand right now, everybody’s coming out of Alabama. Prison is damaged goods in the worst kind of way. We thank you, Matthew, for this opportunity. We look forward to talking to you again in the near future. We ask our audience to continue to support the real news and rattling the bars. We actually bring real news like the Chronicles of Alabama Prison System and the deprivation. We actually bring the real news about corruption in the criminal injustice system, and we ask that you continue to support us and give us your undivided attention when it comes to these things and weigh in on ’em. Thank you.