106: Mother and Son

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Prison is a walled off, secret world, where inmates and officers live a sort of altered reality. For the past 10 years Life of the Law's Executive Producer, Nancy Mullane, has been reporting on the people inside San Quentin State Prison in Northern California and over those years, some of the men she's been reporting on have themselves become journalists -- writing print stories for the San Quentin News and producing audio stories for the San Quentin Prison Report, stories told by reporters rom the unique perspective of life inside prison looking out, rather than from the perspective of free journalists outside looking in.

One day after a meeting of the Society of Professional Journalists San Quentin, reporter Greg Eskridge mentioned he was going to miss the next Sunday meeting. He said his mom was coming to San Quentin for a visit.  How long had he been in prison, Mullane asked? More than 21 years. He said he was sent to prison at the age of 19 after being convicted of murder, attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to 65 years-to-life, and two life terms.

What’s it like to be a teenager sent to prison for what may be forever, and what’s it like to be his mom?

Our story is Mother and Son.

Production Notes

Mother and Son was reported by Nancy Mullane and produced by our Senior Producer, Tony Gannon.

Our Post Production Editors are Kirsten Jusewicz-Haidle and Rachael Cain.


Our engineer was Howard Gelman of KQED Radio in San Francisco. Music in this episode was composed and produced by Ian Coss.

Transcript of Mother and Son

This episode of Life of the Law was funded in part by grants from the Open Society Foundations, the Law and Society Association, and the National Science Foundation.

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