View this email in your browser

I've spent the last dozen years writing and making podcasts for The Marshall Project. I've covered brutal policing tactics and countless stories of abuse behind bars. I feel lucky and grateful to do this work, but not long ago, I felt the creep of burnout. Prisons seemed as terrible as ever, despite years of national conversations about reform. I spent all day talking to people — crime victims, incarcerated people, families of both — about the worst moments in their lives.

I saw plenty of resilience, but I also saw a desire for a different kind of criminal justice system, and the question of what it should look like.

Recently, I've started asking a different question: What does a different system sound like?

A grainy image of a record on a blue background with the text "Redemption Songs" printed on it

Redemption Songs: The Music of Mass Incarceration

In my life outside work, I'm a musician, and a few years ago I stumbled on a record made by men in a Texas prison in the 1970s, selling for $23.94 on eBay. I fell down a rabbit hole of music recorded behind bars, learning about the Pennsylvania lifers who once opened for Stevie Wonder, and the '90s rappers who won a Grammy from their New Jersey prison. You probably know about Johnny Cash's famous concert at Folsom State Prison, but you've got to hear Sonny James; he did the same thing in Tennessee, but recruited men in the prison to be his backing band.

On March 22, we're launching a new newsletter from The Marshall Project called Redemption Songs. Each week I'll be telling the stories of the musicians and artists I've learned about since finding that first record, exploring the history of mass incarceration one song at a time.

Over 25 editions, I'll tell you about the old-timers I've met, who explain how prison music programs aimed to reduce crime by giving people hope before their release. I'll get into why we turned away from this rehabilitative vision, and how prison music went underground. How people have learned to sing and rap over phone lines. How they've recently started labels and nonprofits to release their music. How they now use music as a tool of resistance, to protest injustice and censorship behind bars. How some incarcerated musicians have literally made it to Carnegie Hall.

This music has been a cure for my burnout in these dark times, a reminder that the history of brutality in American prisons is also a history of resilience and even hope. I hope it might do something for you too.

Join me on this journey through the long, fascinating history of prison music — one song a week with a short essay — and hear what it can do for us today.