Kite Line: Life After Prison in Brazil

Kite Line presents letters and correspondence from prisoners in Brazil.

Listen and Download HERE

This week, we have the first of several interviews that were conducted this fall in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Kite Line contributor Micol Seigel was there to teach a course on American prison history at the state university.  Seigel’s academic host introduced her to an activist civil servant at the Secretariat of Penal Administration, who connected her to the members of a work release program.  In this program, people came from prisons all over the Sao Paulo metropolitan region to work in the Secretariat, doing everything in the building from accounting to crafts to janitorial services.  Seigel ended up bringing her students off campus to the Secretariat to hold conversations together with the folks on work release.  Together, the two groups of students crafted research and interview projects, ending with the interviews you will hear this evening.  The interviews were conducted in Portuguese, translated by the University of Sao Paulo students, and read by people here in our Bloomington studio.