Coming Soon: The Kids of Rutherford County

The Promise

Nashville Public Radio

Society & Culture

4.9 • 777 Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2023

⏱️ 2 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A juvenile court in Rutherford County was wrongly arresting and illegally jailing kids for more than a decade before a former juvenile delinquent-turned-lawyer came up with a plan to take it on. This four-part narrative podcast builds on a joint investigation by WPLN Nashville Public Radio and ProPublica and is produced by The New York Times and Serial Productions.

“The Kids of Rutherford County” reveals how this system 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.

Listeners can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever podcasts are available. The first two episodes will premiere on Thursday, Oct. 26; parts three and four will air the following two Thursdays.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you remember what year it was that you were arrested in jail?
0:06.2	I was so young that I don't even remember what was going on in that time.
0:12.7	Yeah, right. And so you were, how old were you?
0:17.1	Seven?
0:18.5	Oh, my God.
0:26.6	When Brandon was just seven years old, police showed up at his door to arrest him. Brandon's offense?
0:27.6	Tagging along with his older brothers, who'd wrestled in a vacant duplex and left some holes in the drywall.
0:34.6	Now, police were there to take Brandon and his brothers to the juvenile detention center, jail basically.
0:42.3	My mom said that they weren't going to take me in, but they were like, well, he needs to learn his lesson.
0:49.6	Brandon was held in detention overnight and then brought to the juvenile court for his hearing.
0:55.7	They had me his shackles from our feet to our arms going in the court.
1:02.6	Brandon should have gone home with his mom that day, but when he went before the judge, she sent him back to jail for a week.
1:12.0	Brandon's arrest and detention happened in Rutherford County, Tennessee.
1:16.7	And his case wasn't unique there.
1:19.2	For over a decade, the county was arresting and jailing kids for even the most minor offenses.
1:25.5	I didn't want to go to school.
1:26.6	I just ran away. I spray painted a to go to school. I just ran away.
1:27.9	I spray painted a penis on a wall.
1:30.2	It happened so often to so many kids in Rutherford County
1:33.8	that getting sent to juvenile detention
1:36.0	was almost a right of passage.
1:39.1	In many cases, what it also was was illegal.
	...

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