Episode 34: “Make Our Enemy into our Asset” with Guest Tyrone Baker

Episode 34: “Make Our Enemy into our Asset” with Guest Tyrone Baker

 

We are excited and humbled to have Tyrone Baker join us on the show this week to discuss his lived experience as a justice-served individual. After telling us his story, including how he ended up incarcerated, he gives us his unique perspective on how to help people that might be headed down the path to incarceration. He stresses the importance of empowering the Black community to strive for economic self-sufficiency, which reduces the need to do illegal things to survive. Drew joins in to discuss the positives and negatives of being a Black man in America, and Tyrone continues on to explain how he aims to be a role model in the community, especially for justice-served individuals, showing how they can achieve their goals, despite their past. Tyrone also tells us about his book, based on the incarcerated experience, that critiques the work of other experts in the field. He explains how he wrote it while incarcerated and his unique way of marketing it. We end with BJ and Tyrone discussing how to get the police out of Black people’s homes - the need for them to learn how to solve issues on their own - and Tyrone’s view of how law enforcement can be used as a tool to benefit the Black community - "making our enemy into our asset" - through recruiting locally for the police department.

 

Tyrone’s Book on Amazon: A Convict's Perspective: Critiquing Penology and Inmate Rehabilitation: Baker, T. Lamont

North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence: North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence (nccai.org)

NCCAI Fundraiser: October 7th at City Barbeque Durham (208 West N Carolina 54)

If ordering online, use code FundA to donate to NCCAI; if ordering in-person, mention the fundraiser!

City Barbeque and Catering (citybbq.com)

 

More about Tyrone Baker:

Tyrone Baker was born and raised in Durham. He graduated from Riverside High School in 2005 just before making a series of life-altering decisions as a teenager that resulted in a murder charge and a 22 year prison sentence. However, he dedicated himself to personal betterment during that dark season of his life. Baker has read over 600 nonfiction books, he has administered business classes to incarcerated individuals, he has worked with other community-centric nonprofit groups on issues ranging from voter security to climate change awareness, he’s active on the motivational speaker circuit, he has acquired skills in various trades, and he’s also a published author and essayist. His book, A Convict’s Perspective: Critiquing Penology and Inmate Rehabilitation, has been used to educate students in collegiate level criminal justice and criminology classes at universities across the state. Baker is passionate about dismantling the carceral state by increasing the variety of economic opportunities that are available to disenfranchised people in the Triangle. When he isn’t spreading the message that economic empowerment is a potent weapon against mass imprisonment, Baker enjoys traveling, motorsports, and spending time with his family.