Uncuffed: The Podcast Radio Show

'How I Met' Series by Spoon Jackson

I was one of the founders of the radio program Uncuffed, and this is the story.

Not in a million years did I think I would be a part of a radio show, a production shining a light on the human condition from behind bars. Since the late 1980s, independent media has been banned from California prisons. This new show where prisoners share their voices on how they once were, how they are now, and how they will be in the future. These untold stories will wring your heart, make you sing, smile, laugh, and cry, stories you never thought you could ever relate to. Prisoners who have traveled the rails, who share music, prisoners who sew and crochet, act, dance, and sing, prisoners who believe in family, truth, nonviolence, and realness. Prisoners who write books, poetry, lyrics, prisoners who donate their slave earnings to numerous charities, prisoners who love and forgive themselves and others and want to receive love and forgiveness. The well of talent and stories are endless. Prisoners whose light will shine with your light, creating a supernova that allows people to meet on a landscape called human.

You can hear prisoners’ voices now unaffected by GTL’s bad landline connected to the telephone. This radio program Uncuffed is the voices from the unheard people left for dead who are reaching out and into the world, people behind bars where happiness, hope, and dreams vanished like long shadows in the desert.

In the late 1970s, California Department of Corrections designed a hideous trend, a movement of mass incarceration as a business, a business that stored away people of color and the poor like forgotten property in the storage bins. This policy of inhumane treatment was designed to reinvigorate and reincorporate the flow of slavery. The CDC only acknowledged an inmate's existence when it was time to take a census, a court account of how many prisoners there was to garner their money for each body. This designed system of slave labor and punishment without any incentives for prisoners to reform and do better, prisoners had to be creative and take it upon themselves to do and be better and uncover their own humanity.

CDCR admission statement was no prisoner was redeemable, and only punishment, slave labor, and long sentences work. In 2006, the tide began to shift a little. California Department of Corrections became a bottomless monster too big to continue to support, so the state and the CDC added the letter “R” and the word “rehabilitation” to its title CDCR. I could have accomplished way more goals if CDCR would have allowed more media, self-help, self rehab, and educational programs, and more access to the outside world.

In 2018, CDCR allowed KALW Public Radio 91.7 FM out of San Francisco, California to come inside Salamo State Prison and teach and develop an audio program using Pro Tools, the state of the art computers. We were taught radio in the same manner as any radio program in the free world. This program has produced 5 audio producers. I am one of them. Our radio show is called Uncuffed, and our mission statement is to put a human face on the throwaway people to show all human beings walk one foot in darkness and one foot in light. Our stories are professionally done, edited, and pitched to our editors from KALW. We interview prisoners whose stories are untold. We unfold their hopes, loves, and dreams, amazing events and creations that could have stayed lost in the cellars of the prisoners’ hearts and souls.

Pictured, Antwan Williams, and Earlonne Woods, formally incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, are the founders of Ear Hustle.

Everyone, even the prisoners, have a worthy story to be told. Their stories may touch yours and help free your spirit. Our Uncuffed stories are told in the real way in the fashion of StoryCorps, but with our own individual twist, depth, and wisdom. Each audio producer has their own style and personality.

San Quentin State Prison has the only other radio program also started by KALW, Ear Hustle. The podcast started at KALW 91.7 and is now heard around the world. Uncuffed hopes to accomplish that task as well. Now, we will all have wings to fly on our own.

‘Ear Hustle is prison slang for eavesdropping, listening ears to something that may not be your business.’ co-host of Ear Hustle.

Spoon always enjoys letters - he will write you back! Feel free to reach out to him at:

Spoon Jackson B-92377

CSP- Solano

Levell II, Bldg D24, 150

Vacaville, CA 95696-4000