Lockup

Over two decades ago, not long after he got out of Texas prison for robbery, Ray Hill got a job at his local public radio station, KPFT in Houston. He started a weekly program about Texas prisons that's now the leading muckraking voice in the state when it comes to exposing graft and corruption in prison facilities there. He also does something else that makes it one of the most unusual and remarkable radio programs in the country: For most of an hour, he takes calls from people whose families are in prison; they talk to their loved ones behind bars, over the radio. Ray explains, and we hear clips from his show. (14 minutes)

A reading of a pamphlet written by ex-con Stephen Donaldson for heterosexual men who are about to enter prison, about how to "hook up" with a stronger man —"daddy" or "jocker"—who'll provide protection in return for sex. He explains the rules and mores that govern this part of American prison culture. There's no graphic language and there are no graphic images in this story, but it does acknowledge the existence of sexual acts. Read by Larry DiStasi. (6 minutes)

Former South African political prisoner Breyten Breytenbach, on how prison changes all your perceptions in ways that last after you've been released. The painter and poet was interviewed by New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler for a radio series called Territories of Art, for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1986. Lawrence Weschler used the interviews in writing his book Calamities of Exile. Breytenbach recounts the experiences in his book The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist. (11 minutes)