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This week we are revisiting some of our favourite episodes from the year so far. This episode was first broadcast on 7 May.
In 1995, Kuantay Reeder is convicted of a murder he says he did not commit. He is sent to Angola prison in Louisiana, the site of a former plantation, where he is forced to spend years working in the fields, work Kuantay calls “modern-day slavery”.
Prof Andrea Armstrong has been going to Angola for years, documenting its history and talking to prisoners about their lives there. She talks about prison labour programmes and the indignities faced by inmates.
After fighting for years to have his conviction overturned, Reeder’s case has little legal hope left. But in 2020 New Orleans elects a new district attorney, Jason Williams, who promises to reckon with the city’s history of unfair prosecutions. Williams talks to the Guardian’s US southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, about his election victory and his reform pledges.
Read Oliver’s reporting on his six months with the division:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/06/prosecutors-new-orleans-mass-incarceration
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/06/life-in-prison-for-stealing-20-how-the-division-is-taking-apart-brutal-criminal-sentences
Photograph: Giles Clarke/Getty Images
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