The Parole Room

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The Parole Room

By: Ben Austen

Narrated by: Ben Austen

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About this listen

Will Johnnie Veal—convicted of the murder of two police officers in 1970—be granted parole after 50 years in prison? How can he convince the parole board he’s reformed when he insists he’s innocent? What is prison time even supposed to accomplish? These are the questions that propel The Parole Room forward as it builds toward Johnnie’s 20th parole hearing—after 19 rejections.

The Parole Room is an intimate journey with Johnnie, a deep dive into the criminal legal system, and a parole-room drama—taking listeners behind the curtain to hear tense deliberations as they unfold. The series is vivid, emotional, and complex, bringing new questions and insights about the US justice system and the country as a whole.

From the writer of the critically acclaimed book Correction and the producer behind the Pulitzer Prize- and Peabody Award-winning podcast You Didn’t See Nothin, The Parole Room is necessary storytelling for our time.

Historical

Judicial Systems

Law

Politics & Government

Public Policy

True Crime

Thought-Provoking

More from Ben Austen

About the Creator

Ben Austen is a journalist from Chicago. He is the author of Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change, which was named one of the best books of 2023 by the Washington Post. His book High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing was long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction and named a best book of the year by Booklist, Mother Jones, and the public libraries of Chicago and St. Louis.

A former editor at Harper’s Magazine, Ben teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago. His feature writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Wired and many other publications. He is the co-writer and host of the Audible Original podcasts The Last Days of Cabrini-Green, and he is the co-host of the podcast Some of My Best Friends Are….

Bill Healy

Sayre Quevedo

Yohance Lacour

Naeema Jamilah Torres

Hannis Brown

About the Executive Producer

Bill Healy is an award-winning investigative journalist. He has produced two podcasts with the Invisible Institute in Chicago: You Didn’t See Nothin and Somebody.

You Didn’t See Nothin won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting, Peabody Award, Third Coast Award, National Magazine Award, and IDA Award. Somebody was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting and won a Third Coast Award, National Magazine Award, IDA Award, Scripps Howard Award, and Headliner Award.

For many years, Bill edited StoryCorps for Chicago’s public radio station, WBEZ, where he also supported the Special Projects and Investigations Desk, crafting radio and multimedia series on the foster care system, race, drugs, and incarceration.

Over the course of his career, Bill has worked on stories with NPR, the BBC, and This American Life. Bill won the 2024 Studs Terkel Community Media Award from Public Narrative for his body of work, which "combines deep narratives with investigative insight, spotlighting Chicago’s vital issues and shaping public understanding."

Bill lives in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood with his husband, Ben Fay.

About the Director and Editor

Sayre Quevedo is an artist and journalist. He works across mediums to tell stories about intimacy, identity, and human relationships. Quevedo began as a reporter with Youth Radio in Oakland, California, at the age of 15. Since then, his work has been featured on NPR, Marketplace, the BBC’s Short Cuts, Love Me on the CBC, McSweeney's, and Radio Atlas.

In 2018, his piece "Espera" received the Third Coast/RHDF Directors' Choice Award and his other piece "The Quevedos" was nominated for a Best Audio Documentary award by the International Documentary Association (IDA). The following year, he won the 2019 Third Coast/RHDF Gold Award for Best Documentary for "The Return." It was also nominated for a Best Audio Documentary award by the IDA.

Quevedo was the Fall 2019 Podcaster-In-Residence for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was an associate producer for The Daily at The New York Times and NPR's Latino USA and a producer for VICE News.

About the Editor

Yohance Lacour is a journalist with the Invisible Institute. He hosted the podcast You Didn’t See Nothin, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody Award in 2024. At Storycatchers Theatre, he facilitates podcasting workshops for system-impacted youth. He also runs the luxury sneaker label YJL and has artwork in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Dubuque Museum of Art and the Smithsonian’s African American Museum of History and Culture.

About the Associate Producer

Naeema Jamilah Torres (she/her) is an award-winning independent filmmaker, impact producer, and educator. Through her work, she aims to tell stories that unpack notions of womanhood, complex ethnic identities, and legacies in the Americas through visual and audio mediums. As a filmmaker, her work has screened at a number of festivals, including New Orleans Film Festival, San Francisco Doc Fest, and St. Louis International Film Festival.

In addition to creative work, Naeema is an adjunct professor in film at both Northwestern University and DePaul University, and most recently led the impact campaign for HBO’s Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. She also serves as the executive director of Mezcla Media Collective, an emerging 700+ member nonprofit organization that provides resources and equity for BIPOC women and non-gender conforming filmmakers in Chicagoland. She holds a BFA in film and communications from CUNY City College of New York and an MFA in documentary media from Northwestern University.

About the Composer

Composer and sound designer Hannis Brown has created and mixed music for podcasts and radio programs including The Anthropocene Reviewed, Will Be Wild, What Now? with Trevor Noah, Scattered, The 11th and The Paris Review Podcast.

Recent commissions and honors include a 2022 du-Pont Columbia Award and NAACP Image Award for The History Channel and WNYC’s Blindspot: Tulsa Burning, 2019 du-Pont Columbia Awards for New York Public Radio’s Trump, Inc and Caught, a National Magazine Award for The 11th from Pineapple Media, and a Peabody Award for production on the podcast Meet the Composer. He performs on 6 and 12-string guitar with the new-music collective Hotel Elefant.

ORIGINALS

Compelling Storytelling • Excellent Production Value • Well-researched Content • Educational Content • Balanced Perspective

Highly rated for:

Most relevant

Very sad but on the flipside of very enlightening story. Well worth listening to. The judicial system in the United States is a mess.

Very well told story