Involved
Involved is a fictionalized story, based on true events, about the people on the outside - the family, friends, and loved ones who navigate life alongside those who are incarcerated. Mixing moments of humor and heartbreak, the series explores resilience, love, and the far-reaching impact of incarceration on those inside, those outside who love them, and the broader community.
In Season one of "Involved" we’re introduced to Myra, whose husband’s incarceration at a medium and minimum security prison impacts every aspect of her life. We follow along with her to the prison for visits, as she launches prison wife radio, and reveals the day-to-day complexities of supporting a loved one who is incarcerated. From early episodes where Myra shares her experiences of visiting her husband at prison, to later episodes when he transitions into work release, Myra’s life as a prison wife is explored through candid reflections and intimate anecdotes shedding light on the profound impact of incarceration not only on her husband but also on their relationship and their shared past. In each of the twelve episodes, Myra confronts societal stigma and challenges prevailing narratives about incarceration, advocating for empathy and understanding towards those impacted by the criminal justice system - and making the case that we are ALL impacted in some way or another. Involved is educational, entertaining, and heartfelt while reminding us the System is most definitely the villain.
Involved
Episode 1: Welcome to Prison Wife Radio
In the inaugural episode of "Involved," Myra introduces listeners to the harsh realities faced by prison wives and families of the incarcerated. Broadcasting from the parking lot of Theirway Heights Prison, Myra launches ‘Prison Wife Radio’ and shares her personal experiences and observations, shedding light on the systemic issues within the Department of Corrections (DOC) and the broader criminal punishment system. Topics covered in this episode include parking lot dynamics, prison politics, and community support.
Episode Credits:
Intro voices In order of appearance:
Lex Ward
Kassandra Voss
Joellen Terranova
Davonna Dehay
Episode:
Myra: La Tisha Conto
Female Visitor Voice: Joellen Terranova
Concerned Visitor: Caren Hill
Additional Voice: Holly Gumpke
Crowd Voice: Nathan Keyes
To continue learning about the experiences of families impacted by incarceration and the broader issues we touched on today, check out our website: Https://InvolvedPod.com
There you can find our reading/learning recommendations, learn how to support the show, and check out other episodes.
Intro:
Myra: Welcome to prison wife radio where we play all the hits while we all wait in our cars for the prison to open its gates, which is actually just really a door, and to welcome us in with open-carry arms, as they try to decipher which one of us is bringing in the drugs Spoiler alert it’s the COs. I’m your host Myra and if you’re out there listening show some love.
Sound: Horns honking
Intro Voice: There are more than 2,000,000 individuals incarcerated in the US legal punishment system.
Woman voice (laughing): Prison wives are a lot like military wives… without all the thank yous.
Woman voice: I mean, they won’t show, right… so we have to tell.
Woman voice: Oh, the system is most definitely the villain.
Woman Voice: Your loved one shows up to medical unconscious? They aint telling you shit.
Woman voice: He’s been down for 20 years, and yesterday he told me that his sentence had to be recalculated. Their mistake added 2 years.
VO: There are more than 2,000,000 individuals incarcerated in the US legal punishment system. This is the story of the people who love them. Involved.
Show:
Myra: 245 days until my husband comes home. Well, not home home, work release home. But honestly that’s a step closer to home.
Myra: I am coming to you live - but really prerecorded - from the parking lot at Theirway Heights. A minimum and medium institution in an undisclosed city, and in an undisclosed state. The temperature is currently 23 degrees and falling, and I am staring out at a fenced in area with children who are not wearing gloves, coats, or hats. Okay, more on that later, because it looks like we we’ve got an out of her car too sooner.
Parking Lot Dwellers: (shouting) Get the f*ck back in your car.
Myra: Yep. She is slowly… very… slowly, making her way through the parking lot. The crowd of anxious visitors is happy to cheer her on as she makes her way toward the front door.
Parking Lot Dwellers: (shouting) Get the f*ck back in your car! Get the f*ck back in your car!
Myra: Okay, while we wait for her Miss out-of-her-car-too-sooner, slow, slow, slow - I cannot stress this enough, sah-lowly making her was her way to the front door, let me fill you in on why we have children running around like maniacs inside a fenced in grassy area 10 yards away from the prison, in the cold without jackets, without gloves, without hats. Okay first… kids are just maniacs, that explains part of it. But the no jackets, no hats, no gloves, in 23 degrees? You probably want to call CPS on these parentals. Okay, don’t ever do that seriously, CPS is just another arm of the criminal punishment system. Let me explain to you the dilemma these parents are put in by none other than the Department of Corrections.
Parent: When you come to visit you have two options – wait in your car or wait in the pen.
Myra: The pen is a faster shot to the front door of the prison, and anybody with little kids – which means little legs - needs to get a head start on the front door.
Myra: We break into this explanation to bring you an update on our slow walker. Our little false starter has finally made it to the entrance. A cop is there at the door to kindly (but not really) point out the CLOSED sign in the window. Maybe he’ll be nice and let her in. Of course, he isn’t letting this old lady in. She’s probably carrying methamphetamine in her bra. Haven’t you read the latest issue of CO weekly. Our depraved loved ones spare nobody to get the drugs they seek. Yep, he’s turning her around. Here she comes. Slowly. Hopefully she makes it past the parking lot dwellers who are now frothing at the mouth waiting on her to get back to her car. It isn’t called Thereway heights prison for nothing. It doesn’t matter if your 20 or 80.
Visitor: Nobody lines up early and if you do line up early they make the whole group wait until you get back in your car.
Myra: It’s a strategy – designed by the DOC to make us all turn on each other ala hunger games. Its effective.
Myra: Parking. There’s a strategy to it. And it’s dependent on how fast you can speed walk to the front door which is roughly 10 to 30 yards away dependent on your parking spot. If you’re a speed walking champion, capable of breaking Olympic world records - and I believe we do have some in our midst - you can go right ahead and show up 2 minutes before visiting starts and park in the furthest reaches of the parking lot. But if you’re slow, or have children, or use a walker, or use a wheelchair, you need to get here at least a half hour early to get a primo parking spot. It doesn’t have to be this way. I mean even the airport allows for early boarding of those with kids and disabilities. I’m a pretty fast walker, so I get here about 10 minutes early for day visits during the week and about 20 minutes early for night and weekend visits. You have to remain in your car, otherwise, they won’t open visiting, as our sweet old lady just demonstrated.
Myra: Okay, She’s getting back in her car now and when that happens – she has to have the door closed – they’ll flip the closed sign and hundreds of people will exit their cars, speed walking – no running or you can’t visit – speed walking toward the door, pushing, dragging children with their little legs, falling sometimes, and not stopping to help each other up. Uh, it's every person for themselves out there. All to cram into the front door first. Like I said, It doesn’t have to be this way, but it’s a well known intention of the DOC to make visiting difficult. They want us to stop coming. And we don't. Our loved ones are doing hard time, so we do soft time. We;re humiliated, abused, gaslit, all so we can go inside and see one of the more than 2,000,000 USians locked up in the criminal punishment system, as Mariame Kaba likes to say. I am but one of many. That’s it for this episode of prison wife radio. I’m Myra Andres. Tune in next week where I’ll explain how prison wives are just like military wives without all the thank yous.
Sound: Opens the car and gets out.
Sound: Prison doors opening.
Myra gets back in the car.
Myra: Listener, I am back in the car, and sad to report no visiting for me for the foreseeable future. They took him to the hole. So, if he isn’t on phone restriction I’ll hear from him in 24 hours. Maybe. Phones could be out. And Im not sure which rotation he’ll be on morning or evening calls, which means I will look like a maniac for the next 24 hours gripping my phone and keeping it with me everywhere. The bathroom, my team meeting, and I will pick up that phone in the middle of any conversation, or interaction, and exit the room like Flash Gordon. This is called learning to live as a high functioning generally anxious person.
Sound: Window rolls down
Visitor: You going in?
Myra: I already was, they took him to Seg.
Visitor: What? Oh no, I'm sorry honey.
Myra: do you know of anybody whose got someone back there right now?
Visitor: Julie. I’ll text her and see if she can send word.
Myra: Thanks. Tell him I love him.
Visitor: Sure thing.
Myra: Okay have a good visit.
Sound: Myra rolls up the window,
Myra: That, curious listeners is the flip side of knocking each other down to get into the visiting line first. Some of us would leave every man behind to save ourselves, and some of us know that if the DOC can’t split us, we can gain power. We work together to make sure we are supported. We’re a family. A super dysfunctional, constantly terrorized family.
Sound: text notification on phone.
Myra: Siri read my messages.
Siri: Okay, one text message from Brianna. Do you want me to read?
Myra: You know I do Siri.
Pause
Myra: (annoyed) Yes.
Siri: Brianna says ‘Video from last week. already getting calls. HAHA HAHA HAHA. Emoji face rolling on the floor laughing.
Myra: I was asked to speak on a panel about criminal justice work – their language - and I must say I went a little off the rails. You have to do that from time to time otherwise people forget we have millions of people caged in the US.
Plays video
Panel Moderator: Go ahead.
Audience member: What’s a typical day like in this work?
Myra: There are no typical days. But today, a typical Tuesday, I had to take my brother – I’m not just a so-called prison wife, I’m a prison sister, a prison daughter, a prison niece. But today, it was my brother. I had to take him to mental health court where I watched a room full of self-congratulating fuckalls in suits pat themselves on the backs for a job well done because they made some program graduates read essays aloud to a court room full of prosecutors and public pretenders. I mean, imagine creating something called mental health court and thinking that was a fucking win in the fight against mass incarceration. Water at the prison is contaminated because of the foam seeping into the ground water at the air force base a mile away from the prison but are there any lawyers coming to talk to the incarcerated population about their legal rights and options? I’ve received 3 phone calls today from incarcerated individuals who need an attorney for cases that will not be assigned a PD, but have received zero responses from the so-called legal aid attorneys who work in my own fucking organization. So if there are any attorneys in the audience who want to work on these cases please feel free to email me. I also work at my day job, which pays bills – but barely because, you know nonprofit, but also by the time I put money on my husband’s phone and commissary, and donate to all the other individuals who need phone calls, and food packages, I am usually racking up my credit card debt if I am completely honest.
Myra: After I left court this morning I went back to the office to get my colleague to sign a homeless verification form for my brother so he would be able to get into a housing program. Why is my colleague – who doesn’t work in housing doing it? Because his actual mental health court case manager – who is basically just a cop with a fucking Bachelors Degree, wouldn’t. So… that’s on us. The families. We do our jobs, their jobs, all the jobs. Every day there is a new bill we have to read and make comments on, money to give to our loved ones and others' loved ones depending on who is in need, panels – unpaid I’ll add - We come here to educate you all about what's actually fucking happening and then when we get done you come up to us, and what’s your takeaway after all this information? You ask us one of two questions: “are you worried he’s going to get raped?” or “How do you have a relationship without sex, I couldn’t do it.” Every. Single. Time. It’s exhausting. Prison wives, and prison loved ones, are relentless and resourceful and while we are unpaid and unacknowledged – and may I add thanks to terrible shows like Love After Lockup – thought to be unstable and crazy. We are overwhelmed with work and underwhelmed with support from people in power. People with money. People with privilege. We are battling everyday, applying band aids to gushing wounds while we lose every battle in a never-ending war against the prison industrial complex.
That’s what every day is like. It’s soul crushing, anxiety inducing, and with that I’ll end by saying we need you in the battle, not cheerleading on the sidelines posting shit on Instagram. Do that sure, but get in here and be a comrade. Which means, tie your fate to ours – and only then are we really going to get to a place where abolition is possible.
Audience claps.
The video is over.
Myra starts her car.
Myra: Welp, that wraps up this week’s episode of Prison Wife Radio. Tune in next week to find out If my love makes it out of the hole, and if they take any of is good time and what is good time anyway. You’re welcome, and I’ve been great.