Serial Sets ‘The Kids of Rutherford County’ As Latest Podcast

EXCLUSIVE: Serial Productions, the New York Times-owned company behind the breakout, eponymous podcast series, has found its next case.

The company has teamed up with ProPublica and WPLN Nashville Public Radio for The Kids of Rutherford County.

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The four-part series, which launches on October 26, tells the story of a Tennessee county that was arresting and illegally jailing children for over a decade.

The podcast comes after an investigation from ProPublica and WPLN Nashville Public Radio.

Hosted by Meribah Knight, the series exposes a juvenile justice system that was playing by its own rules.

In April 2016, 11 Black school children as young as eight years old were arrested in Rutherford County, Tennessee. The reason? They didn’t stop a fight between some other kids.

For almost two decades, this county had arrested and jailed hundreds, maybe thousands, of children illegally. One lawyer, who had also been locked up as a child, eventually asked the obvious question: How did this happen? The answer led back to a powerful judge, the jailer she appointed, and a county that treated these excessively high arrest numbers as normal and a state that didn’t stop them.

Knight explores how the juvenile court’s rules regarding confidentiality and privacy allowed a secret, illegal world to grow, and to fester. What does it take to shut it down? And will the people in charge face any consequences?

It is Serial Productions’ latest title after Serial and its follow-up S-Town as well as Nice White Parents, The Improvement Association, The Trojan Horse Affair, We Were Three, The Coldest Case in Laramie and The Retrievals.

Serial Productions was acquired by The New York Times Co. in July 2020.

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