Shades of Freedom
Shades of Freedom is a podcast from the Aspen Institute’s Criminal Justice Reform Initiative. Our podcast amplifies and uplifts promising efforts aimed at reducing mass incarceration, and examines the ecosystem of related inequalities that surrounds and perpetuates it.
Our podcast features many of the people working on changing the justice system, from policymakers to activists, and from returning citizens to systems leaders. Our discussions are wide-ranging, from the school-to-confinement pipeline, to alternatives to incarceration, to policing, to sentencing, to prosecutorial reform to incarceration, to reentry and how all of this intersects with other community systems (such as education, health, housing and more). Today’s world seeks more than reform; it demands transformation. Our guests on Shades of Freedom personify this ideal.
The podcast can be found on all the major platforms, including Apple, Google, and Spotify. You can also listen to individual episodes at the links below.
The Shades of Freedom podcast, hosted by Dr. Douglas E. Wood, Director of the Criminal Justice Reform Initiative, is named after and inspired by the book Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process, by Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.
Episodes
2022 Bonus Episode: Pushing Back on the Pushback to Justice Reform | guests: Erica Bond & DeAnna Hoskins
Episode 16: Beyond Crisis Response: Health and Justice | guest: Tasha Blackmon
Episode 15: Restoring Rights and Clearing Records | guest: Sheena Meade
Episode 14: Local Justice Journalism | guest: Daniel Nichanian
Episode 13: Turning Pain Into Purpose | guest: LaTonya A. Tate
Episode 12: Can We Depolarize Justice Reform? | guest: Marc Levin
Episode 11: Survivors Choose Healing and Restoration | guest: Danielle Sered
Episode 10: Distress Concentrated In Place | guest: Renita Francois
Episode 9: Must Prison Be Traumatic? | guest: Nneka Jones Tapia
Episode 8: Parsimony v. The Justice System | guests: Daryl Atkinson & Jeremy Travis
Episode 7: Black Liberation and Justice in Detroit | guest: Amanda Alexander
Episode 6: Mapping (In)Justice | guest: Eric Cadora
Episode 5: Walking Philly’s Tightrope of Youth Justice | guest: Chekemma J. Fulmore-Townsend
2021 Bonus Episode: Beyond Policing: Creating Safe and Just Communities
Episode 4: Knowledge, Power and Freedom: The Past and Future of College-In-Prison | guest: Rev. Vivian D. Nixon
Episode 3: Transforming Justice in Oregon: Racism, Protests and COVID-19 | guest: Bobbin Singh
Episode 2: Freedom Libraries: The Million Book Project | guest: Dwayne Betts
Episode 1: The Criminalization of Black Girls | guest: Dr. Monique Morris