[K]: Okay. 

[N]: Welcome to On the Road. No, I'm just kidding. 

[K]: A special on the road episode of the podcast. We are driving back home to Iowa City from my parents, and it's pride weekend in Iowa City. It was also Juneteenth. So happy pride. Happy Juneteenth. Never forget that Juneteenth, in addition to marking the quote unquote abolition of slavery federally, is also the foundation of the prison industrial complex. Because, you know, slavery is still allowable specifically as a punishment for crime. So, a lot of stuff to think about specifically in regards to the Johnson County Jail, I think. 

[N]: I think so too, but I think we would talk a little bit about abolition first in general, before diving into that and how... especially abolition from the lens that the prison industrial complex was, you know, created as a way to cage black people and indigenous people and to silence dissent.

[K]: And further the project of slavery. 

[N]: And further what?

[K]: The project of slavery.

[N] And, yeah, and to further the project of slavery under the guise of a, quote, legal way to do slavery, which is to force incarcerated people to labor for nothing or slim to nothing. Cents. Yeah, so abolition. 

[K]: Yeah. I think of the modern movement for police and prison abolition as an extension of the historical abolitionist movement against slavery because of those deep ties that the prison industrial complex has. Because of the ties that modern policing has to slave patrols. And I think it can be really easy when working towards abolitionist goals to make compromises that maybe are not actually abolitionist. 

[N]: Yeah. And, you know, I want to be clear about what we define as abolition for us, which is that we are staunchly against and do not believe that the that police or prisons or jails need to exist, that the way to deal with harm is not with cages. It is through collective healing and transformative justice and restorative justice. And to further that, abolition also means imagining and creating alternative systems to the current capitalist systems which do not meet our needs, our survival needs. So as abolitionists, we have to simultaneously work to dismantle the prison industrial complex and policing. While at the same time knowing that the main reason why people end up in prisons is because they do not have their basic needs met. And so how can we meet those needs to make sure that people don't have to steal, that they don't have to protect themselves in violent manners because of the way that society has forced this upon certain populations, especially within the United States. So we are both dismantling the prison industrial complex and policing and building alternative systems for meeting people's basic survival needs and dealing with harm. So imagining new ways to deal with harm as a community and to have healing for all people involved in that process. 

[K]: Yeah. And I want to expand upon survival needs a little bit, because I think there's often an argument about violent crime being the only justifiable way of using our current criminal punishment system. And I think probably a lot of people wouldn't necessarily extrapolate how someone in that situation might be there because they haven't had their basic needs met. And so I want to just explain that a little bit, which is that social and emotional needs are still also basic needs. When we talk about basic needs, the first three that come to mind are food, water, and shelter. And of course, those play a huge role in the type of petty crimes that we know people definitely don't need to be in jail for like theft, and that people don't need to be murdered over, I mean, before even... I mean, extrajudicially killed for... that one year old child was just murdered by a police officer who responded to an alleged theft of diapers. So it goes beyond—this is a tangent—but it goes beyond just putting people in cages for crimes they may or may not have committed. I mean, it, it extends to policing and that we extrajudicially kill people as young as one year old for being black in America. 

[N]: Absolutely. 

[K]: But so when we're talking about people who do the kinds of violent crimes that we use to justify the existence of cages, things like rape, things like murder, things that aren't even necessarily in self-defense, that you can't necessarily make a moral argument about. I still see those things as evidence of people's basic needs going unmet. Because in my view, if you have your basic social and emotional needs met from a young age, you will grow into a healthy person who does not have to resort to these things to deal with conflict. 

[N]: Absolutely. And to further that, you know, I would say that we don't always know the history of people who are, you know, committing violent crimes. And also, there is a lot of evidence that points to complex PTSD being involved or mental health needs going unmet or general health needs going unmet. What happened in your childhood? Did you have your needs met in your childhood? Do you have your needs met now? And if you're homeless or experiencing extreme poverty, you might resort to violence for a means of trying to find community. Or being pushed to the fringes of society will lead you to feel like you have no other choice but to be violent, which will then end you up in a cage and or dead. 

[K]: Yeah, in a cage or dead. And it makes perfect sense, to me anyway, why so many people resort to violence. Because that is the method of conflict resolution that is modeled by police and the prison industrial complex. The state has a monopoly on violence, and they use it every day to get their way, to punish people, to quote unquote keep people in line. And so, frankly, when that is what is modeled by society, it is no surprise to me that those are the kinds of tactics that people resort to on an interpersonal level. 

[N] Oh, I mean, one hundred percent, and I would argue that... So Johnson County has this Criminal Violence Intervention program, right? Which is to end gun violence in Johnson County. But I would probably they probably would extend it to other forms of violence as well. But the, I mean, the focus right now is, is gun violence, right? And, you know, I would argue that there is no world in which we can end violence, interpersonal violence in our community, when the state perpetuates violence every day, right? Like there is no world unless we are willing to tackle the state violence against its own people. There is no world where we will resolve the violence that exists within our communities, because the way that we respond to violence, interpersonal violence, is with more violence. So there is no world where we can end gun violence in our community while police have guns, while people are jailed and then perpetuated to state violence, which then only perpetuates more violence interpersonally. There is no world where we can end community violence without tackling state violence. 

[K]: Right. It's a complete fucking joke to have a community violence intervention program based out of the county prosecutor's office with a goal, an explicitly stated goal of ending gun violence in Johnson County. When the Johnson County Sheriffs', the Iowa City Police, UIPD, every police force in the county have a state issued license to kill. Carry a gun everywhere. How? How does that make sense? 

[N]: It doesn't. 

[K]: It doesn't, it doesn't. And so when people make these sort of arguments to justify the current system, really what I hear is just a desire to continually reinforce the current system. Because this system is what makes the conditions that people use as an argument to keep the system. 

[N]: Yes. People are not willing to truly confront the underlying reasons why violence is so common and infiltrates so many communities because they are not willing to, especially in the sense of a county attorney's office, willing to confront their participation in that violence every day. You would have to accept that A) The job I am doing is violent. B) the system I work for is violent. I am contributing financially and with my labor to a violent system, and if I am to truly follow through on what I want and believe, which is the end to community violence or gun violence, I need to work myself out of a job. I will no longer get to do this job. I will no longer get paid, and one day I will have to meet my needs in some other way. That is a huge thing for people to tackle, and they are not willing to do it, especially when they've spent their whole life believing in this system. As a lawyer, as a prosecutor, that is the way that we deal with with violence and how we get justice. It's not justice. It's revenge. It's punishment. It's not justice. And it does not heal people. And it does not lead to better communities or better interpersonal relationships or a better world for everyone, for our kids, for any living being, for human and more than human. So that to me is like, we're lost. We're not on the right path because we're not tackling the right things. 

[K]: Yeah. And I want to extend also my view of abolition beyond just dismantling these systems as they are now. Because I'm imagining a future where we've done that and we still need a cultural shift of our collective mindset of how we deal with harm. And obviously that would be like happening alongside dismantling these systems. But in addition to dismantling the physical structures, the bureaucratic structures, we have to address the desire for punishment as redress for harm within ourselves. We have to address our impulses for revenge that have been cultivated within us by this system and by this society. And we need to collectively invest emotionally and logically in a different way of addressing harms. 

[N]: Yes. And that is so deeply ingrained in us. Like, I was formerly doing work with young people and I started, I was working in these community art classes, doing kind of community education with young people. And I started doing some research on like, how do I deal with conflict? How do I deal with kids who are misbehaving or, well, quote misbehaving, or being disruptive in some way and it's a negative impact on everyone else or the well-being of the community, which would be the art class, right? And punishment and revenge—but more so punishment—is so ingrained in us from such an early age. Like how do your teachers deal with kids who are disruptive? It's through punishment. It's through time out. It's through taking away, I mean, sometimes it's like, oh, you don't get snack time or, oh, you don't get to have recess or you don't get to eat lunch with your friends or whatever it is. It's not a consequence of their actual actions. It's not a logical or natural consequence to what they did, but it's just an arbitrary punishment that teaches them nothing and has really negative impacts on on their future and how they're going to act as well. We've been indoctrinated to believe that punishment is how we deal with harm or, quote wrong behaviors or disruptive behaviors, and that has to change culturally in so many aspects, not even just crime or how we deal with, quote crime, but how we interact in our interpersonal relationships. 

[K]: For the small stuff. Yeah. Like disrupting a class. Is that the end of the world? No. Did anybody get physically hurt? No. But, like, punishment is still the answer. And I'll even say that I don't think they're arbitrary punishments. I think the punishments are specifically designed to deprive a survival need. Like all the examples that you mentioned, that survival need that is being deprived is social and emotional support. It's being with your friends. It's going outside for recess and exercising and being in the sunshine and getting like vitamin D, It's, you know, it doesn't have to be depriving you of food or water or sleep or shelter, which are like, these are the kind of things that happen more so in prisons, right? Like at a bigger scale, you get things like, we have a friend who has a religious diet and he spent years not being able to eat the food that is in line with his diet, because the prison just wouldn't give it to him. And he ended up having a lawsuit about it and winning. They admitted that they were wrong about that. And also he's got some ongoing medical issues that are impacting his sleep. And the facility he's in is being actively hostile. And so he's been deprived of sleep. Like these are very real things that are Internationally considered to be tortuous but are pretty standard within prisons. Like his story is not unique. It happens all the time. And it happens to people who are a lot less educated than him, who have a lot less knowledge of the legal system, who have a lot less support and connection, both inside the facilities that they're in and outside of it. There's a lot of people in his exact position who don't have people like us to talk to every week and decompress about this stuff. So the punishments that we use are specifically designed to remove a necessary, like critical need that you need to maybe not survive, but to be a well-adjusted person who doesn't perpetuate more harm. 

[N]: Okay. Pause. I need to, uh, open up my seltzer real quick. Because my throat hurts. 

[K]: Okay. We'll take a pause. 

[N]: Okay, so we've touched on abolition as dismantling the prison industrial complex and policing. We've talked about... 

[K]: And also just the concept of punishment as a solution to anything in general. 

[N]: And also kind of a cultural shift on how we deal with harm and healing and punishment and revenge to now, you know, another section of abolition which is imagining a better world. We can have a world where people are not hurting each other all the time in extremely serious ways. Like we harm people every day, right? There is no world where as people in community, we will not harm each other or hurt each other, but the ways in which we hurt each other are so exacerbated by our society and our system that a better world is possible. A better world is possible where people have their needs met, where we are not committing violence against each other, where we are living in harmony with the earth and all living beings. That is possible. Go ahead. 

[K]: Well, I was just gonna say it can be really hard for people to imagine that world. It can feel so far away and so impossible. And so I encourage you when you're trying to imagine this world and feeling like it's not possible, to expand your timeline. To not get so bogged down in the timeline of one human life or even one human generation. But don't let the limitations of time stop you from imagining that this world is possible because that's the first step. We can get to the, the how and how we get from A to B and like how long it'll take and all the nitty gritty later. But like, step number one is truly feeling in your heart and in your soul and embodying the idea that this is possible someway, somehow at some time that's not now. 

[N]: Yeah, absolutely. And along with that, letting go of these arbitrary constraints that these walls that have been built up by our current system. A lot of people struggle to imagine a better world because they're trying to imagine it within the constraints of our current system. This is not a world that exists under capitalism. This is not a world that exists where the nation state of the United States is still standing. This is a world way into the future that has no walls and borders. And it is so free from all these constraints that we've built up around us right now. And so imagine freely and don't let those constraints that exist now, like money and systems and all these other things stop you from imagining. 

[K]: I want to put in a fun little interjection. I've been thinking a lot about the movie Chicken Run. I love that movie. It's a great movie about animal liberation, animals having autonomy and liberating themselves. No people come to save them. The chickens just break out themselves. But I think this idea of imagination... There's a scene where one of the hens in this chicken farm is sitting on the roof with this rooster that has, like, crash landed in their chicken farm. So he's like from outside the fence, but they're talking about grass and she's imagining green grass because she's never felt that beneath her feet. And he is talking about how the grass is always greener on the other side, and then when you get to the other side it's brown and prickly. And so I think that's just a great illustration of imagination is the thing that Ginger has that Rocky doesn't have. Ginger is imagining something better. And Rocky's been out in the real world and he knows it's not that good, but he's got... he doesn't have the real walls around himself because he's not from this chicken farm, but he's got mental walls that have been imposed by the way that society is. And so, I think because she has the physical walls, Ginger has had to work really hard to break down the mental walls so that she can break down the physical walls. And I think that's something that Rocky has yet to do. And that's why Rocky ultimately doesn't really save them. Ginger saves them. And so anyway, I think we've also got to work really hard to dismantle those mental walls so that we have the clarity and the fortitude to execute the vision. 

[N]: Yeah. And, and we're gonna segue here to specifically Johnson County and this conversation that has been happening for many years now, three, four, possibly, about the current jail being no longer able to operate as a jail and them needing to build a new, bigger jail. A better Johnson County exists, and even supervisor V Fixmer Oraiz originally said zero beds is the right number. 

[K]: Yeah. There's a lot of arguments that they're making for why they need a new jail. I think we're going to not really address the sort of structural building arguments in this conversation. I think we're going to focus on the capacity argument in terms of creating a bigger jail with more beds, aka more space to cage more people. I think that's really what I want to focus on because you brought up that zero is the right number, which I agree. And I don't think we should ever concede that point. But I also want to talk about some of the facts of how many people we're currently holding in the current jail, what those numbers have been like historically and the frankly complete lack of explanation for why the county thinks we need a higher number than that. 

[N]: Mhm. Yeah. And I mean, I may disagree a little bit, not in the points that you're making, but in the points that I want to make, which are more rooted in why I think we don't need a jail at all. And some arguments around why we need a new jail that I think are antithetical to abolition. 

[K]: Sure. Yeah. 

[N]: But those are my points. So I'll let you go and talk about the capacity point that you want to make. 

[K]: Yeah. I mean, I want to just be quick. There's so much that that we could unpack here. But there's a few different bits of data that the Sheriff's office is putting out. They're putting out these sort of monthly snapshots, starting from March. And in these snapshots the average daily population at the jail is hovering around 90. I don't think it's breached 100 in the past few months that they've been putting out this data. So there's that number and then there's the... 

[N]: I think it did in April. 

[K]: No, it was 97 was the highest that we've seen so far. I'm not sure.. there's a lot of different figures. I'm not sure if that number actually includes only people at the physical Johnson County building. I think that number includes all of their people, which is people on electronic monitoring and people in Johnson County custody housed at other—not housed—caged at other facilities. So the other number that's relevant is 65, which is the operating capacity that I believe the Sheriff himself has set for the jail. Even though the state inspector allows it to hold more people than that. He set it at 65. 

[N]: The state inspector has said that the jail capacity is 92, quote beds. 

[K]: 92 people. 

[N]: 92 people and a capacity for 20 people in holding cells. So that would be a total capacity of what? 112, but that's not the amount of people that they can cage more longer term, right? I think the holding cells are like overnight, basically. Twenty four hours, less than twenty four hours stays. 

[K]: And so the sheriff has been keeping the number of people at the physical jail location at 65, a max of 65. And is making an argument that that's not enough. Well, we have some historical data to look at, and not only has the average daily population of people at the jail trended down, since I think the numbers I saw were from 2007. That's been trending down, while for the same period the Johnson County population has been trending up. So already we've got contradictory data that says that even though the population rate is going up, crime is going down. At least the crimes that we're caging people for in the jail. And then in addition to that, there's one number that really interests me, which is in 2020, the average daily population was 56. What happened in 2020? Covid. And so there was a concerted effort to get people out of the jail to mitigate spread. There was a concerted effort to look at who was in the jail and make an assessment. I don't know how they made this assessment, but make an assessment about who could be released and who actually, quote unquote needed to be there. That right there is proof to me that today we could get below the 65 operating capacity. 

[N]: Why did we ever go back? Why did we ever go back if we were able to in 2020, decrease the amount of people that were being caged in Johnson County to an average daily population of 56, why did we ever go back? Why did we decide to then cage those people again for a similar crime? I assume they decided like, oh, if you are this level of crime, we can release you to do at home monitoring or ankle monitoring or whatever they decided. I don't know the details, but they decided that they did not need to be caged inside the Johnson County Jail because they were not I would probably venture to guess, quote a threat to society. Right? 

[K]: Well, yeah. And we have some information about the top charges in the Johnson County Jail currently. And many of those, to me feel like candidates for this type of assessment. One of the highest for the past couple of months has been OWI first offense. Operating while intoxicated, first offense. Those people don't need to be in the jail. There's marijuana possession. Those people don't need to be in the jail. A lot, frankly, a lot of alcohol related charges and vehicle related charges. And so those are not the violent crimes that everyone uses to justify the existence of these institutions. And those are definitely the kind of crimes that would be assessed for release in an emergency situation like the outbreak of Covid. So that we are anywhere above this 56 number today, while crime is still trending down, makes absolutely no sense and is proof to me that we are actively doing the opposite of what we should be doing to decarcerate and reduce the number of people that we jail until we actually get to the correct number, which is zero. So anyway, that's all I wanted to talk about in regards to capacity. I just wanted to sort of put out some information that kind of debunks this idea that we need a jail that could hold 120 people and 140 at some time when they decide to expand and 240 at some time when they decide to expand after that. So I'll let you talk about some of the points you wanted to make now. 

[N]: Well, you know, there's a lot of points I think that can be made. And so, I want to draw on some of the data, though, continuing the conversation about capacity a little bit and the data that the Sheriff's department is releasing, which is to say that all jails and prisons and police are racist and the Johnson County Jail is no exception. It is one hundred percent a racist institution and it exists in our town. They cage five times more black people at the Johnson County Jail. 

[K]: Those numbers are published on the website. You can look at them. 

[N]: The Sheriff himself published them on his website. It is racist. That is proportionally to the population of black people versus white people in Johnson County. 

[K]: Yeah. So like to frame this a different way because I know interpreting numbers and data can be kind of difficult. Like, I think the snapshot I saw from March showed black males and white males incarcerated at a roughly equal rate, like about like 50, 50 people that month. Oh, that's another tangent: the Sheriff's data has decimals, like it was 48 point something people. I don't know why these aren't whole numbers because we're talking about people. There's no reason these shouldn't be whole numbers. I don't understand it, but whatever. Anyway, black males and white males incarcerated at basically the same rate. But obviously we know that black males and white males do not exist at the same rate in Johnson County. The black population as of 2025 census data was like 9.2 percent for black people and like 50 something percent for white people, or maybe 40 something percent, almost 50 percent of the population is white. And so you can clearly see that there's a discrepancy. 

[N]: Yeah. That we, per the population of people, we are caging black people at five times the rate that we're caging white people. That's racist. That's racism. That's clearly racism. There's no other explanation for it. 

[K]: Well, there there is another explanation for it, which is a racist explanation, which is the explanation that the criminal violence intervention program, uh, or sorry, Community Violence Intervention Program presented at a joint entity meeting. I don't remember the date. They used the phrase "hot spots" and "hot people" to describe how crime is concentrated in our community. That's code for black people. They're trying to say that black people do more crime and do more violence, and that's racist as fuck and ignores all of the systemic things that we've talked about that explain why people do crimes. If we acknowledge the racism that means that black people are less likely to have their survival needs met than white people. Okay. I guess you could extrapolate then that black people are more likely to do crime, but that isn't inherent to being black. Black people don't do crime because they're black. They do crime, if they do crime, for the same reasons that anyone does crime, which are all the reasons we laid out, which are not having your survival needs met. All that to say, just to reiterate that the Community Violence Intervention Program is a joke and just as racist as the county jail. 

[N]: Yeah. And I want to make a distinction here. It is the Criminal Violence Intervention Program. 

[K]: Yeah, that's not what it's technically called. But that is... 

[N]: No, that's what it's called. 

[K]: Oh it is? 

[N]: It is called the Criminal Violence Intervention Program. It's not... 

[K]: Oh I thought. Okay. 

[N]: Yeah I think. 

[K]: I don't think so. I don't think it is. 

[N]: Oh... I do like to lie sometimes, so don't worry about it. I might be wrong. 

[K] CVJ is the acronym the C is up for debate. 

[N]: CVI.

[K]:Sorry, CVI. I'm getting my acronyms confused CJCC, CVI. Okay. Moving on. 

[N]: All that to say is that the Johnson County Jail is racist. That's the point I want to make. It is clear in their data that policing is racist, and it is clear that the jail is racist. Another thing that I want to point out is that a building itself is not responsible for the day to day actions of the Sheriff's deputies and the things that happen within the jail itself. 

[K] Okay. Yeah. So I was gonna put a pin in this, but yeah, let's bring in the structural argument. The other argument, in addition to "we need more space" is the current building is on the verge of falling apart. It's got structural integrity issues that just can't be fixed. And it's at the end of its life and there's nothing to do but build a new jail. 

[N]: Lies. 

[K]: First of all, those are lies, because there've been assessments by different consulting firms that have said that like A) that repair is possible and B) that demolition and reconstruction of a similar sized facility would be way cheaper than the amount that they're trying to get us to bankroll. But also those specific problems that they're pointing to, which are real, like there is like some wear and tear on the building. I'm not going to negate that fact. I will point out that it's probably been exacerbated by the fact that they've been deferring maintenance on this for over a decade, because they've wanted a new jail for over a decade. But the point is, the way people are treated in that jail, the negative experiences that people have in that jail, and when people die in that jail, it's not because of anything wrong with the building. 

[N]: Yes. It is because the staff are racist. The system is racist and negligent of the people that it is responsible for keeping alive. Period. That's it. There's no... that is why people die. That is why people are mistreated. It has nothing to do with the building itself, or how fancy or your mattress is, or how fancy the food that you serve is. It has nothing to do with it. It really doesn't. And I also want to point out that the county has said that they want they want to improve the conditions for the incarcerated people who exist within the facility, that they're caging them in. The jail. I guess that was a really convoluted way to say jail. But, I like to emphasize that these are cages that we're putting people in. And I don't necessarily think that people think about that just when you hear the word jail. But a lot of county supervisors and officials have been talking a lot about how we need to make the conditions more humane for the people that are being incarcerated, and that we need to make things better for them. And I just want to say point blank, every single jail is inhumane. Every cage you can put someone in is inhumane. There is nothing fancy that you can do that will make it better. 

[K]: Yeah. I mean, to to draw a comparison back to prison facilities because we have some experience with that also, One of the things specifically that's been pointed out as a flaw with the current jail that could be potentially improved with a new jail is that they don't allow in-person visitations. First of all, their website still says that they do. That's a lie. They stopped it, I think, because of Covid. And then they just never brought it back. Not really sure. Don't really have a great explanation for why they haven't allowed that. 

[N]: The Sheriff has simply just said, Sheriff Brad Kunkel has simply just said that he will not allow in-person visits anymore. That's the only... that's it. 

[K]: Right. So like, there's no, what I'm saying is there's no justification for like, we can't because this X, Y, and Z, there's none of that. And so, theoretically, maybe we could trust that they would allow that at the new jail. But I mean, there's no, that's not going to be on the ballot language, right? The ballot language isn't going to say you have to include X, Y, and Z for the people who are incarcerated. So there's not going to be any legally binding agreement between voters and the county about making these improvements. But having in-person visitation, even if we had, that does not make it a humane jail. Because I have been to facilities where our friend, who we talked about before has been mistreated and has been denied access to things like food and sleep and all this other stuff, and they have in-person visitations. And we saw him in person, and we even got to hug at the beginning and end of our visitation. Like we got the personal contact that is denied at so many places. And having that was awesome for him and also did not make his experience any less inhumane. 

[N]: Yeah. And also to point out, I mean, something that we've talked about with our incarcerated friends, that the state has parameters on what you can and cannot provide to people who are incarcerated. These are not decisions that the county supervisors get to just make or that the Sheriff necessarily gets to make. There's certain types of bedding and blankets that are legally allowed for them to have. They don't get to just buy fancy mattresses for the people that they cage. That's not part of it. They have specific parameters on what they can purchase. Like we've talked about food and how they're not required to feed you good food or food that tastes good or has flavor or that's warm or whatever. They just have to give you food. So all those things that they say are going to increase people's...

[K]: Well-being.

[N] Well-being inside of a cage are really arbitrary because there's only certain things that you're allowed to order or do. And the state sets those parameters. 

[K]: Yeah. And in addition to all of these sort of, I guess I'll call them like soft infrastructures, things like food, like visitation, space for programming, space, you know, to talk to mental health professionals or advocates or lawyers or like, you know, people outside of just the jail staff. So there's all of our questions about whether or not they would actually provide these things, but then we also have some concrete information about the actual infrastructure for the people being caged. And it's not any better. The current jail is not up to current code, but it's allowed to operate because we're grandfathered in. So the new jail would, I guess, make updates so that we are up to date with current code, but the cell's? Going to be smaller than the offices. So look me in my eyes and explain to me how it's humane to make a person live in a room, a locked room, that is smaller than the place where a staff member is going to work. You're spending 8, you know, I'll be generous, maybe you're doing overtime, like 12 hours in this space, and it's going to be bigger than the space where someone is living for potentially a long time. People can be in jail for a long time. That sort of reminds me of another point, which is that a lot of people in the Johnson County Jail are not there for a long time, and you could argue that that is a reason why those people should never enter the jail at all. But I digress. People can end up in jail for a long ass time before being charged with anything or before being convicted of anything. And made to live in a space that is smaller than an office space. 

[N]: Yeah, it's not humane. There's no humane cage. It's a cage. There's no humane cage. It doesn't exist. It will never exist. And it is antithetical to abolition to say that it does or that more humane conditions exist. It's not true. We don't need any jail. And we certainly do not need a bigger, fancier jail. 

[K]: Yeah. And so I think that kind of encapsulates some of these... 

[N]: Oh, sorry. 

[K]: I was just going to say that kind of encapsulates some of these reformist things that people... we're bringing them up to point out the hypocrisies, but I want to be clear that I'm not advocating that we spend all our time and energy improving the conditions of the jail. Because I don't, I think that's a waste of time because, as we just said, the jail is always going to be racist. The people who staff it are always going to be enforcing a racist system. And so when we bring up these things as arguments, we must be careful not to start advocating for these things instead of abolition. 

[N]: Right. And there's something I want to draw to, which is the county is being sued right now because they killed a man. 

[K]: Yes. In the Johnson County Jail. 

[N]: In the Johnson County Jail. 

[K]: In 2024. 

[N]: Mhm. Yeah. Because they did not provide him with adequate medical care when he was going through alcohol withdrawal. 

[K]: Nathaniel Davis Jr. is his name. 

[N]: Yes. Is his name. And that is all on staff. That is all on the culture. That is all on racism and a racist system and racist staff. 

[K]: It's on every staff member who saw him experiencing alcohol withdrawal, knows the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal and did nothing. It's on the racist medical professional who talked to him through the window for four minutes and did nothing. It's on Sheriff Brad Kunkle because that is his staff. That is his program that he is elected to oversee. And it is on the Board of Supervisors because they are the ones who oversee Kunkel and his Sheriff's deputies. It's on County Attorney Rachel Zimmerman Smith, who was the one who charged Nathaniel Davis Jr. It's on all of them. 

[N]: And I would say that no better building would have changed that outcome. No fancier cell would have changed that outcome. The only thing that would change that outcome would be him not being in a cage in the first place. That is the only thing that would have changed that outcome. So it is not on the structure of the building or, how fancy the cell is or, the resources for the people that are caged. These are racist systems. These are racist jobs and they will always be racist. 

[K]: And this particular, I think this particular scenario is so damning because of what we know about the top booking charges, and so many of them being related to alcohol. Like this is not a one-off thing. This is not a freak accident. There are innumerable people who go into that jail struggling with substance use disorder, who are now cut off from alcohol and will go into withdrawal. That is a common occurrence. Common enough that the employees who saw Nathaniel experiencing that knew what it was. So this is not like a one off freak thing that just, oh my God, how could this happen? Like, no, this could happen at any day in our Johnson County jail. 

[N]: And I think that is such a good point to point to the fact that reform will not change that, because they knew it was alcohol withdrawal. They knew what he was going through and they didn't do anything. And no amount of reform can change that because that is on people, that is on the system and the people who uphold that system, because that's what they believe in. 

[K]: That's on ideas of punishment. That because he was in a jail cell, not even charged, like or not even, I keep saying charged instead of convicted, not even convicted of a crime, right? Like we've got this innocent until proven guilty framework, but we know that's not true because jails exist, right? Like pretrial incarceration is proof positive that we don't actually believe in innocent until proven guilty. And all of these staff members see him as nothing but a criminal, nothing but a black male criminal. And they see so many black men come in and out day to day, and they just are so used to dehumanizing them. 

[N]: Yep. And so I just think that highlights so clearly what you were saying, which is that reform is not the answer and reform is antithetical to abolition. We cannot reform these systems. We cannot temporarily make them better. I mean, it's just not possible. And we cannot accept advances forward that are antithetical to our true goal. Mariame Kaba in "We Do This Til We Free Us" has a clear list of reforms and and that we should always, always, as abolitionists not accept and things that we should not do as abolitionists. And we'll link that in our description, because I can't remember all of them right now. 

[K]: But one of them is building new. Right? 

[N]: But one of them is building new. I mean, another one is simply giving money to the carceral system.

[K]: Right, I mean, and that would be that would be additional money to renovate the new jail, to quote unquote improve conditions. Right? That would be a reform that I would oppose. Right? I  just thought of a great metaphor for this. Let's think of a house fire, a burning house. What is your priority? Is your priority getting everyone out of the house? Or is your priority improving conditions for the people who might still be stuck in the house? 

[N]: While it's burning. 

[K]: Right? Like, I just think any reform that we are going to accept should be on the basis that we are removing people from the system. 

[N]: Correct. Like the reforms that we do accept should be reforms that are decreasing the amount of people that are incarcerated, reforms that decarcerate people who are currently in the system and things of that nature. Reforms that actively work to dismantle the system, not just reform it to something that will look better to the liberal or the neoliberal, but still operate the same way. Because that's what all these reforms do, right? They make liberals, they make neoliberals feel better about caging people, but really, they just make it look better to the outside, but the system operates the exact same, right? 

[K]: Exactly. I think aesthetics is so... I'm so glad you talked about that because it's so clear comparing a brand new constructed facility versus the way that they're painting the deteriorating old jail. It's an aesthetics thing. They don't want people to look at the jail from the outside and think it looks bad, and extrapolate that to mean that they're treating people poorly on the inside. They have an easier time hiding their poor treatment of people if they have a shiny new facade that looks nice, that people can just walk by and feel good about. 

[N]: And it's and it's clear from what the architect has said. I went and listened to a meeting where architect said that he wanted to put windows on the outside that look like windows, but that the people who are caged can't see outside still. But that to the public, it will just look like a normal building. Sorry. I don't really want my jail to look like a normal building. I actually want people to see it and be disgusted and want to say that's a really shitty thing. We should get rid of that. Because why do you want a fucking fake me out that this is a fancy ass what? Hotel? Like grow up? 

[K]: Yeah, yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned that. So, like, the concept of these windows are that there's a window on the outside and a window on the inside, and there's a bunch of space in between. 

[N]: Yeah, like a foot and a half of space or something. 

[K]: It filters in natural light because they have to acknowledge that they can't deprive people of natural light, but they also aren't going to give people a view because of quote unquote security concerns. I'm not really sure what they use to justify these windows, but then having a window on the outside makes it less obvious to people that this is a place where we're caging people, right? Because you think of a standard jail, if there are any windows they're really small. The current jail windows on the second floor are like, I don't know, maybe a foot tall maximum by like... Maybe actually six inches by like, two feet wide. Yeah, six inches tall by two feet wide. I've been in that jail. That's how I know. And I've seen it from the outside. 

[N]: And there's bars.

[K]: It looks like, you know, a window for a prisoner. And the point of this style of architecture is to make it look nicer on the outside without actually giving a bigger window to the incarcerated person. 

[N]: And that right there is reform. Like that to me is like that metaphor for reform, which is that we want this to look fancier and better to the average person. 

[K]: And we want to have an argument that we're providing natural light. 

[N]: Right. But it doesn't really change the conditions for the people that are caged, or what this cage does to someone's well-being or mental health. Just being in a cage is dehumanizing. It is disgusting and it is terrible and it hurts you. And that doesn't change because it looks fancy on the outside or because we reform it, right? That doesn't change. That's just inherent of being a person in a cage or anyone in a cage. That is just... it feels like shit. It's shitty and it feels like shit. There's no way around that. And, yeah. I just think that's a great metaphor for how reform is in practice. Which is just make this look better to the average person, but in reality, the system stays the same and we can't accept that. I won't accept that. 

[K]: I won't accept it either. 

[N]: I will not accept that. 

[K]: And I don't think anyone who wants to be anti-racist and work towards anti-racist goals should accept that. I think everyone who wants to call himself an anti-racist should also be an abolitionist. Because I don't think you can separate those two things. Just to bring it full circle, I think this will be a nice ending to the episode, but abolition is an extension of the abolition of slavery. And abolition of the prison industrial complex, and of policing is an extension of the abolition of slavery. And if you want to believe that you would have been an abolitionist back in the day, you better fucking be an abolitionist now. Okay. 

[N]: Yep. Because if you are not an abolitionist now, I do not believe that you would have helped abolish slavery. So let that sink in. 

[K]: Let that sink in. Fuck prisons. Fuck jails. 

[N]: Fuck prisons. Fuck jails. Fuck Brad Kunkel, Fuck Rachel Zimmerman Smith. Fuck Johnson County. Fuck them all. 

[K]: Hell, yeah. Empty every cell. Burn every prison. Peace.