More than 30 years ago, Noelle Hanrahan launched a journalism project called Prison Radio built on a simple idea: Give incarcerated people a media platform to tell their own stories.

Hanrahan, who made a name for herself producing radio commentaries by the well-known political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, told Stanford Magazine in 2001, “Given the corruption, I am not sure it would even be possible for [Abu-Jamal] to receive a fair trial now. But I have to believe in the justice system.”

Her views have since evolved, influenced by the abolitionist views of thinkers like Angela Davis and Ruthie Wilson Gilmore.

In 2020, Hanrahan, who already had a master’s degree in criminal justice from Boston University, went on to obtain her J.D. from Rutgers Law School so she could legally advocate for the freedom of the incarcerated people whose voices she helped to proliferate through Prison Radio.

In a wide-ranging conversation with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar, Hanrahan spelled out why she no longer trusts the justice system and the courts to deliver impartial decisions, and how the resources that prop those systems up need to be reallocated directly toward people’s needs.