Introducing “The Kids of Rutherford County,” a New Podcast From Serial Productions
The New York Times, October 19, 2023: Introducing “The Kids of Rutherford County,” a New Podcast From Serial Productions
“The New York Times and Serial Productions today announced ‘The Kids of Rutherford County,’ a new series produced in partnership with ProPublica and WPLN Nashville Public Radio. The four-part narrative podcast builds on a joint investigation by the two news organizations, whose reporting uncovered that a Tennessee county was arresting and illegally jailing children for over a decade. ‘The Kids of Rutherford County’ reveals how this came to be, with particular attention to the adults responsible for it and the two juvenile delinquents-turned-lawyers who try to do something about it. The podcast’s host is Meribah Knight, a Peabody Award-winning reporter for Nashville Public Radio who co-reported the original investigation.
“In April 2016, 11 Black school children as young as eight years old were arrested in Rutherford County, Tennessee. The reason? They didn’t stop a fight between some other kids.
“What happened after those arrests exposed a juvenile justice system that was playing by its own rules. For over a decade, this county had arrested and jailed hundreds, maybe thousands, of children illegally. One lawyer, who had also been locked up as a child, eventually asked the obvious question: How did this happen? The answer led back to a powerful judge, the jailer she appointed, and a county that treated these excessively high arrest numbers as normal and a state that didn’t stop them.
“In ‘The Kids of Rutherford County,’ Knight explores how the juvenile court’s rules regarding confidentiality and privacy allowed a secret, illegal world to grow, and to fester. What does it take to shut it down? And will the people in charge face any consequences?”
Additional reading:
ProPublica, October 26, 2023: Secrecy Shields Powerful Adults in Our Juvenile Justice Systems. Kids Showed Me What’s Really Happening.
ProPublica, June 8, 2022: Juvenile Detention Center That Illegally Jailed Kids Now Will Answer to an Oversight Board
Insider, November 3, 2021: 'Stuck in a system': Former child detainees speak out about a Tennessee juvenile detention center and the controversial judge who put them there
The Tennessean, June 18, 2021: Rutherford County paying up to $11M in lawsuit alleging over 1,000 children were illegally incarcerated
