Hey, this is Lauren. This podcast discusses issues including mental illness, suicide, trauma,

and abuse. There are also some curse words. Thanks so much for listening.

After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, communication got weird for a while. We all spent way

more time on the phone and on video calls, frustrated by slow internet and choppy audio.

Those hard to hear calls that were so annoying for us, that's the norm for Natalie Medley.

All our phone calls start like this.

Hello, this is a prepaid call from Natalie. An inmate at the Indiana woman's prison.

To accept this call, press zero. This call is subject to monitoring and recording.

Hi. Hey. Has everything been good on your end?

Yeah, I'm um, Natalie has a reputation as a bit of a rabble rouser. She speaks her mind.

Even when she knows it will get her in trouble and it often does.

So I'm a definite fighter and when I say fighter, I just mean like, again, this system,

I don't have good relationships with staff.

Those staff members can take away Natalie's privileges, although you and I might not consider them

privileges. Things like being able to watch TV or buy snacks. Worse than that, much worse.

They can put Natalie in the segregated housing unit, solitary confinement.

At the Indiana women's prison, the segregated housing unit is a hallway with 25 cells.

Natalie was sent to that unit in the summer of 2015. She remembers being there a couple weeks

before she got some news. I was told to pack out a new person had arrived in log.

I was told that she was 19. She was sent to log from the chalau that afternoon.

People in prison talk in this sort of shorthand. The segregated housing unit, that's lock or

sag. A correctional officer. That's a CEO. The chauhall obviously is the cafeteria.

...