Many states have launched tablets into prisons, permitting customers to do issues like hearken to music and ship messages. A number of incarcerated folks instructed NPR that whereas the units aren’t excellent, the flexibility to stream music has been a game-changer.
Sarah Gonzales for NPR
conceal caption
toggle caption
Sarah Gonzales for NPR
Many states have launched tablets into prisons, permitting customers to do issues like hearken to music and ship messages. A number of incarcerated folks instructed NPR that whereas the units aren’t excellent, the flexibility to stream music has been a game-changer.
Sarah Gonzales for NPR
Joe Garcia first heard about Taylor Swift within the late 2000’s, whereas he was within the Los Angeles County jail awaiting trial on homicide expenses. He initially wasn’t impressed together with her music.
Now, a number of albums and jail transfers later, he credit Swift’s music with serving to him get by his life sentence.
“Taylor Swift’s voice, the fairytale romance of all of it, takes me again to a way more idyllic time and sort of retains me centered on recapturing that kind of sentiment as I’m going ahead in life,” stated Garcia, who was convicted of homicide and is eligible for a parole listening to, which is tentatively scheduled for April.
Garcia — who counts “White Horse,” “The Man” and “…Prepared for it?” amongst his prime 5 — detailed his journey into Swiftdom in an essay that was revealed within the New Yorker final fall in collaboration with the Jail Journalism Challenge (PJP), a nonprofit group that trains and publishes incarcerated writers.
The piece describes the influence of Swift’s music on his life — together with his rekindled relationship with the lady he describes as his “sweetheart” — and the often-complicated logistics of accessing music behind bars over time.
It has since been shared broadly on social media, the place many customers wrote that it introduced them to tears.
Garcia, who’s now at Excessive Desert State Jail in California, instructed NPR that regardless that he wasn’t capable of observe the response in actual time, he is been moved to listen to that his essay (certainly one of many he is revealed by PJP) resonated with so many individuals.
“In loads of methods, I am a traditional human being with all types of feelings and heartache and despair … similar to anyone who’s not in jail,” he instructed Morning Version in a cellphone interview. “And so I am all the time making an attempt to determine a technique to talk that kind of empathy, I assume, and get folks on the surface to grasp what it is like in right here.”
Joe Garcia wrote about his expertise listening to Taylor Swift in jail in a New Yorker essay that went viral in September.
Courtesy of Jail Journalism Challenge and Joe Garcia
conceal caption
toggle caption
Courtesy of Jail Journalism Challenge and Joe Garcia
Garcia hoped that centering Swift, one of the crucial beloved and influential musicians working as we speak, can be a relatable technique to get that time throughout.
And whereas he can (and did) converse at size about his favourite eras, his piece shines a highlight on a much wider matter: the mechanics, and which means, of music in jail.
How folks get entry to music in jail
Garcia’s story illustrates among the challenges that incarcerated folks have confronted in accessing music — and the way new expertise has made it attainable for a lot of to hearken to songs and artists of their selection, some for the primary time in years.
His essay particulars how he navigated ever-changing units of guidelines and social dynamics to hearken to music in varied prisons over greater than a decade.
That journey included shared CD gamers, a borrowed pocket radio, a reconfigured “old-school boombox,” an MP3 participant paid for by his household and, most just lately, a pill.
Dozens of states have made tablets out there — both at no cost or on the market — to prisoners lately, beginning with Colorado in 2016. Nearly all folks incarcerated in California, the place Garcia resides, now have them. And the businesses behind the tablets stated that they had roughly a million customers nationwide as of late final yr.
“We’re given a free pill that’s assigned to us by the state,” Garcia defined. “After which there’s a complete bunch of companies which can be both free or we’ve to pay for.”
Customers pays cash to ship messages, make video calls, play video games, obtain books and stream music, amongst different features.
There are nonetheless limits round consuming music, as incarcerated folks instructed NPR. Songs value cash and tablets are in lots of instances solely allowed throughout sure hours of the day. And the streaming companies they arrive with do not all let customers do issues like play an artist’s total discography or curate a customized playlist — versus saving current playlists.
Even so, they are saying, the expertise makes a giant distinction of their day-to-day lives.
“Music is simply an enormous, large think about right here,” Garcia stated. “All all through my on a regular basis each day, you see guys strolling round with headphones on, with earbuds in. They’re going to be singing alongside to no matter they’re listening to, they’re going to be reciting their very own kind of rap lyrics, they’re going to be in circles evaluating issues.”
Not everyone seems to be listening to the identical songs, after all.
A Spotify playlist of the handfuls of songs PJP writers stated meant essentially the most to them in 2023 consists of artists as diverse as Smokey Robinson, Carrie Underwood, Kendrick Lamar, John Lennon and Miley Cyrus (and in addition Swift).
Music as a method of reduction and connection
A number of folks at prisons throughout the nation instructed NPR that music makes them really feel linked, each to others and the surface world.
Jeffrey Shockley, who’s 24 years into serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania for homicide, says music affords some reduction from the “mundane monotony” of jail. That is very true if you’re not restricted by what radio stations are close by and which songs they determine to play, he provides.
Jeffrey Shockley, who’s serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania, says he listens to all the things from Beethoven to Eminem.
Courtesy of Jail Journalism Challenge and Jeffrey Shockley
conceal caption
toggle caption
Courtesy of Jail Journalism Challenge and Jeffrey Shockley
Shockley estimates he has greater than a thousand songs on his pill, starting from Christian music to classical to Eminem. He says having the ability to select what he desires to listen to all through the day — like reggae on a contented morning or Beethoven earlier than mattress — has a huge effect on his temper.
“It is having the ability to have that means to achieve out and listen to one thing totally different that may catapult you out of no matter depths of hell you could be in in that second, figuratively talking,” he added.
Plus, Shockley stated, listening to totally different genres offers him extra to speak about with several types of folks.
Garcia equally says music is without doubt one of the few mediums — together with sports activities and information — that folks in jail can share, no matter their race or background. He says music helps him join with others, whilst somebody who was admittedly considerably delinquent earlier than jail.
“Music is sort of one aspect of me making an attempt to open my coronary heart and actually admire folks for who they’re,” he added. “And I actually do see that so much within the different incarcerated guys … We find yourself utilizing it as a platform to come back collectively as a substitute of being divisive.”
Garcia stated music not solely helps him join with different folks, but additionally with the surface world. He is spent his complete life taking note of new music — which is why he is now listening to Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo at age 54.
“I do not need to lose observe of what the world is like,” he added.
Reflecting on the previous and seeking to the long run
Music can carry again highly effective reminiscences and supply a supply of hope for the long run, incarcerated folks say.
Shockley, 61, says listening to the music his grandmother raised him on, like gospel and Aretha Franklin, reminds him each of his household and less complicated occasions.
“[Like] if you’re a younger boy and also you’re doing issues and working round, enjoying within the yard within the inexperienced grass,” he defined. “And now you are sitting in a concrete jungle and hoping for a breath of contemporary air .. It is like a tranquil second that some folks might take as a right as a result of when you do not have it, you miss it.”
That music, he provides, conjures up him to attempt to give again and uplift others as he was taught — however admittedly struggled to do — when he was youthful.
“I do not need to be who I used to be,” he stated. “So I will be who I may be or ought to have been.”
KC Johnson, who’s incarcerated in North Carolina, described their pill as a “lifesaver.”
They received it in 2021, simply two months earlier than their mother died. The 2 shared a love of blues, and Johnson was particularly grateful to have the ability to hearken to music that reminded them of her.
KC Johnson, whose launch date is in three years, appears to be like ahead to going to live shows for the primary time in over twenty years.
Courtesy of Jail Journalism Challenge and KC Johnson
conceal caption
toggle caption
Courtesy of Jail Journalism Challenge and KC Johnson
Johnson, who was convicted of theft and second-degree homicide, stated music — particularly live shows — was an enormous a part of their life earlier than they went to jail some 17 years in the past.
Now they hearken to music just about all day: on their pill whereas learning, with a conveyable radio whereas working or over the audio system at their work-release job at a neighborhood meals financial institution (notably the one time they do not want headphones).
“That is the place all my cash goes,” stated Johnson, 45. “It is for my pill, for my music.”
Johnson’s projected launch date is in late 2026, at which level they’re planning to maneuver right into a midway home. They’re particularly excited that the power permits MP3 gamers, which is able to hopefully imply simpler entry to artists on demand, together with on runs.
Johnson can be trying ahead to seeing dwell music once more, for the primary time in over twenty years. Going to a competition is on the prime of their to-do record. They are saying they’ve all the time cherished the optimistic vitality at live shows, the place everyone seems to be there for a similar motive and getting alongside.
“I simply need to get again in that environment,” Johnson stated. “A lot has modified on the earth, however I really feel like going to one thing like that, it is going to nonetheless be prefer it was once I was youthful — or I hope it’s.”
Johnson sees music as a technique to reconnect with their previous self — and expects the identical will likely be true even as soon as they’re out of jail.
“The songs that I’ve listened to and listen to will remind me of my power and endurance and all the things that received me by,” they stated. “It is a highly effective instrument, music is.”
The printed piece was produced by Mansee Khurana.
