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Current Affairs

PREVIEW: John J. Lennon on doing journalism from prison

Current Affairs

Current Affairs

Comedy, Government, News, Culture, Politics

4.4645 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2020

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this particularly special episode, Pete Davis speaks to prison journalist John J. Lennon (@JohnJLennon1), who writes and acts as contributing editor for Esquire magazine, all while incarcerated in Sing Sing. This is a preview of an episode currently available in full to our Patreon subscribers. To listen to this episode in full, as well as lots of other brilliant bonus content, please consider becoming one of our subscribers at www.patreon.com/CurrentAffairs!

Transcript

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0:00.0

when in 2015, after so many years, you know, surveillance cameras are finally put in that.

0:06.9

But after so many cries from primarily the prisoners saying they were getting, they were sort of assaulted by the guards.

0:13.8

But it's an interesting thing because what it really looked like, how it showed up in real life was that the guards would write up reports

0:23.4

that the prisoners would assault them. For so many years, it was a level of, like, assault on staff,

0:28.8

you know, about 50, 60 a year, 70 a year, I had like a 10-year stats on it. The first year the

0:35.1

cameras came in, there was like 10 assault on staffs. So I had to unpack all that rather esoteric information in an investigative reportage kind of way and put that information in a piece where people could understand it. Like, wait a second. So what does that mean? The first time, you know, the cameras came in that there's 10, what, 13 assault on...

0:57.5

There's never been 13 assault on staff, and that matter.

1:00.3

So I had to ask that.

1:01.5

I had to say, okay, this is what that means, folks.

1:04.1

That means when they beat your ass, they write you up for assaulting them.

1:09.0

And when I did that, it was basically a hypothesis.

1:11.8

But it was a hypothesis through personal experience and observation and talking to a lot of my peers,

1:17.6

and I got their stories, and I got their medical records.

1:20.3

And it was a pretty balsy piece to write for somebody on the enzyme.

1:24.5

So we published that at the same time.

1:29.1

So I was starting to work on those cases in 2015 and 2016. These were like years-long pieces in the making, right? And then I was

1:34.6

working on the one for Esquire at the same time.

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