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Motive Exposing violence and cover ups, the new season of Motive investigates the hidden world of big prisons in small towns. Places where everyone knows each other and difficult truths get buried.
Motive

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Motive

Motive

From WBEZ Chicago

Exposing violence and cover ups, the new season of Motive investigates the hidden world of big prisons in small towns. Places where everyone knows each other and difficult truths get buried.

Most Recent Episodes

6: Aftermath

Host: Patrick Smith Producer: Marie Mendoza

5: Collateral Damage

A 14-year-old boy whose father was wounded in a gang shooting faces down threats of violence and the temptations of joining a gang. Meanwhile, a person who killed one woman and wounded another will avoid criminal charges.

4: Getting In And Getting Out

The gang murder of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams shook Chicago and affected many of the anti-violence workers on the West Side. As former gang members they sympathized with Jaslyn's dad, Jontae, his desire to spend time with his daughter and how that put her at risk of violence. Jontae still struggles with the guilt. And when he decided to help police catch his daughter's killers his gang friends turned on him. **Content warning: This episode contains uses of the n-word.

3: Underpaid And Underappreciated

Host: Patrick Smith Producer: Marie Mendoza

2: De/Escalation

Host: Patrick Smith Producer: Marie Mendoza

1: After The Gunfire

Host: Patrick Smith Producer: Marie Mendoza

'Motive' Season 5 Podcast Trailer

Producer: Marie Mendoza Host: Patrick Smith

Bonus: Prisoncast

In this bonus episode of Motive, we bring you some excerpts from a special project we created. After a years-long investigation into prisons, we wanted to make something that wasn't just about people in prison, but also for them. In August of this year we collaborated with radio stations across Illinois to create a broadcast that was heard in prisons statewide. We played sounds incarcerated people requested to hear from the other side of the prison wall, and dedications for sounds that family members thought would be important to their loved ones. People requested simple sounds from the outside world, like babies laughing, rain on a tin roof, the waves of Lake Michigan. We also played people's music requests and even an original song, "Bring It Back", created by some students of the Rebirth of Sound program, inside Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois.

Motive Presents "Through the Cracks"

From our friends at WAMU and PRX. When 8 year old Relisha Rudd disappeared from a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. in 2014, nobody noticed. By the time authorities formally declared Relisha "missing," 18 days had passed since she'd been spotted at school or the shelter where her family lived. Seven years later, Relisha has never been found. Through The Cracks investigates gaps in our society and the people who fall through them, and in this first season, host Jonquilyn Hill asks if Relisha's disappearance was, as the city later claimed, unpreventable

7: Where Life is Precious, Life is Precious

Prisons helped rural towns, while Black communities in Chicago paid a heavy price. Now, rumors swirl that parts of Pontiac prison may close.

Motive

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