Their stories brought freedom – literally

When I think about stories set in prisons, my first touchstones are fictional – whether it’s Orange is the New Black, Prison Break or Wentworth, who hasn’t thought about how to deal with aggy bunkmates or what to buy from the commissary? But what we see on screen doesn’t necessarily reflect real life.

However, I don’t think losing your freedom should mean losing the ability to tell your own story. In 2017, Nigel Poor, a visual artist, teamed up with Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams, two men incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in California. Together they launched Ear Hustle, the first ever podcast to be created and produced inside a prison. It’s available online for free and is also broadcast to prison communities, including in California and in the UK.

It offers a no-holds-barred view into the lives of people behind bars and also former convicts after their release. 

And when I say no-holds-barred, I mean it. The hosts get into all sorts of issues – asking how you can live a meaningful life when nearly all of it is spent behind bars, how to be a parent from prison, people’s memories of their final moments before being jailed, and how sex and relationships work when you’re on the inside and your loved one is on the outside. 

Nigel started working with San Quentin State Prison as a volunteer in 2011. Earlonne put it best when he described her to LitHub: “People see things differently in this world. Some see no value in discarded things or people. Nigel looks more closely, sees the what if. 

“Day after day, she showed up in the Media Lab and SAW everyone there. We weren’t invisible to her. She saw us. As somebody who spends a lot of time watching things myself, I consider her a professional observationalist – and a constant, relentless note-taker.”

In the same interview Nigel said: “When we were recording, we’d try to have what were often deeply personal interviews in a space that was almost never quiet, and almost never private. Everything was a challenge. But whenever my tank was running empty on the essential qualities – politeness, patience, and persistence – Earlonne was there to level me out so we could get back to the work at hand.”

The podcast had a life-changing effect on its hosts. In 2018, Earlonne’s 31-year-to-life sentence was commuted by then-governor of California Jerry Brown. “I believe Earlonne will continue to educate, enlighten and enrich the lives of his peers at San Quentin and the many, many people who listen faithfully to Ear Hustle,” Brown wrote at the time. Earlonne is now employed as a full-time producer on the podcast. In 2022, his co-host Rahsaan “New York” Thomas was granted clemency. He was released a year later.

In 2020, the podcast was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting for bringing audiences “a consistently surprising and beautifully crafted series on life behind bars.” Over 100 episodes later and 78 million downloads later, it’s now being adapted into a docuseries by the production company co-founded by Morgan Freeman. 

The mutual respect between the hosts is obvious when you listen, and adds a really intimate feel to the podcast. You can listen to all episodes for free here. The one about a prison hospice is particularly moving. 

“I’m Roz, married to Chris. We live near Birmingham, UK. Coco is our 5-year-old chocolate Sprocker spaniel (Springer/Cocker mix).

In October 2020, I took Coco for a walk to our local playing fields. I parked and, as I was closing the boot after letting Coco out, I heard the car behind me screeching off. I turned around and Coco had vanished. In my gut I knew she’d been nabbed. I checked the fields first in the desperate hope that she was there but there was no sign of her. I called the police but they said they couldn’t do anything without the car registration number. 

We immediately logged a police report online and I put it onto our local Facebook page in the hope that someone might have seen or know something. We were inundated with help and support. One friend put us in touch with someone from Midlands Today who did a feature on us; my husband went on local radio; and we had a feature on Birmingham Live. 

Through recommendations we also discovered all the various groups for lost pets including DogLost. They do amazing work helping people retrieve pets. They set up the Facebook page “Coco’s Crew” to get the message out further.

The next few days were spent trawling social media, pet selling sites, and walking round the area looking for cameras that might have caught something. We managed to get a recording of the car but even the police couldn’t get the car reg from it. This is where Eliot Higgins came in. Someone from DogLost put me in touch with him. 

[A quick note from Lucy here: Eliot Higgins is the founder of Bellingcat, an incredible investigative outfit. Bellingcat specialises in something called Osint, short for “open source intelligence” – essentially stitching together publicly accessible photos and other online data to get to the truth. It can be used for anything from investigating war crimes to, well, finding stolen dogs! Bellingcat’s got loads of guides on how you can do it too – I’m a big fan.]

We managed to download the original CCTV footage and sent it to him. His software was able to recognise patterns and identified the car registration. The car was registered to someone who lived some 35-40 miles away from us. 

We still couldn't get Coco back as there weren't grounds for a police warrant. I hadn’t seen them put her in the car, and the local police didn't want to call on spec and risk tipping them off and then them moving Coco on.  

Finally I got a tip-off from someone who called me saying that someone had tried to sell him a dog matching Coco’s description and he’d got suspicious. He gave me the registration of the car, which matched the one we had. This gave the police grounds to go in and seize Coco and they returned her to us 13 days after she was stolen. 

From what we were told she was being kept outside in a pick-up truck with another dog. Once home, she pretty much slept for three days and was very protective of her food. But she was soon back to her old self!

We're definitely very protective of Coco now. She’s such a big part of our family and it was horrible when she was gone. We know how lucky we were to get her back. I was staggered by the support we received from complete strangers.” 

That’s it for this week! But before I slip to the bottom of your inbox, I wanted to say thank you for reading – whether you’ve just signed up or have been here since the start, it’s so fun to put this together every week for you.

I’ve tried a few different things in the past month or so, and I’d love to know what’s worked (and what hasn’t!). This newsletter is for you, so if you have any ideas about what you'd like from it, I am all ears (just like Coco the dog). You can reply to this email to let me know what you think.

It’s also the European elections this week. I can think of a few stories where we may very well lead to change at the ballot box. More on that next time, I hope!

I’ll leave you with what is now the unofficial anthem of this newsletter, ‘The Spark’ by the Kabin Crew and the Lisdoonvarna Crew. If you’ve got another two and a half minutes spare, give it a listen. 

Have a great week.