Dying on the Inside: Women Lifers at Muncy Prison, a forthcoming podcast from the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting, tells the stories of women prisoners and the ways that incarceration wears down their bodies.
"Dying on the Inside" will debut on April 22, with subsequent episodes releasing weekly.
Arthritis. Diabetes. Chronic joint and back pain. These might sound like the ailments of a woman in her 70s, but they are common among women much younger living behind bars.
Incarceration, and the stress and lack of resources that come with it, can damage the body in ways that people on the outside don’t often consider. Bodies break down faster, and by the time an incarcerated woman reaches her 50s, she may experience the health conditions of someone decades older.
This phenomenon is at the center of a new podcast series from Temple’s Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting, in partnership with Create Genius Media and presented by WHYY. Dying on the Inside: Women Lifers at Muncy Prison is a five-part podcast that takes listeners inside State Correctional Institution Muncy (SCI Muncy), a Pennsylvania maximum security prison for women, and shares the stories of women serving life sentences as their bodies break down. The series debuts on April 22, with subsequent episodes releasing weekly.
Dying on the Inside is written and co-executive produced by Yvonne Latty, professor of journalism at the Klein College of Media and Communication, and director of the Logan Center. It is hosted and co-executive produced by Cherri Gregg, KLN ’12, co-host of WHYY’s flagship local news program Studio 2.
“There’s something going on in prisons called accelerated aging, where a woman in her 50s is really more like someone in her 70s,” Latty said. “These women are aging more rapidly because of the conditions, the low-quality food and the depression they’re experiencing.”
Gregg and Latty began working on the podcast in 2024 through a series of interviews with women who are or were previously incarcerated at SCI Muncy. In 2025, Gregg and Latty toured the prison, getting a firsthand look at the cells, the infirmary and the conditions that incarcerated women endure.
“I find these women to be extremely compelling and honest. They’re very kind and very religious, and they’ve done a lot of work on themselves,” Latty said. “And the podcast really gives you an inside look as to what their lives are like.”
The incarcerated women at SCI Muncy struggle with a long list of health issues, including arthritis, back and knee problems, and diabetes. Many of the women prisoners have had hysterectomies.
These issues are exacerbated by how difficult it is to navigate the health system from prison. Incarcerated women rely on prison guards to transport them to medical appointments, and follow-up care is made more complicated by their lack of access to telehealth and online healthcare portals.
Gregg and Latty spoke to doctors studying mass incarceration and its effects, and they explained that prisons don’t participate in clinical trials or experimental drugs.
Then there are the effects of stressful prison life.
“Everything in prison is 15 minutes,” Latty said. “They get 15 minutes to eat. They get 15-minute phone calls. That in and of itself, the constant pressure of living under that kind of schedule, just wears on your mental health.”
The Abolitionist Law Center refers to the negative health outcomes resulting from prison life as “death by incarceration.”
“Generally, as you get older things start to break down a little bit, but this is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” Latty said.
The podcast also explores solutions to these issues, and episodes feature interviews with U.S. Senator John Fetterman, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis, and people from the ACLU and Abolitionist Law Center.
For Gregg, the podcast is years in the making. She initially began investigating the topic in 2019 while covering prisons and criminal justice reform for KYW Newsradio.
“I met so many people who had been impacted by incarceration in a myriad of ways,” Gregg said. “One woman told me about one of her mentors at Muncy who had cancer and was really sick. A lot of the women she met there were dying, and she felt like something was wrong.”
Colin Evans, KLN ’21, data editor for the Logan Center, and Natalie Reitz, KLN ’24, also played key roles in the podcast’s production.
The production crew will celebrate the launch of the podcast during an April 22 event at WHYY. Temple will host its own event at Randall Theater on May 13, where Gregg and Latty will talk with women who have been impacted by the criminal justice system.
Latty and the Logan Center have previously produced podcasts on stop and frisk policies, youth homelessness in Philadelphia, and the 40th anniversary of the MOVE bombing. Dying on the Inside continues the Logan Center’s mission of bringing attention to underreported issues and amplifying unheard voices.
“I’m incredibly proud of this work, and I feel blessed to be the director of the Logan Center,” Latty said. “Our work gives a voice to people who have no voice, and I get to expose students to the power of investigative journalism.”