Noah Pines spent seven years as a prosecutor in Georgia — weighing sentences, navigating cases, trying to be a fair voice inside a system that does not always reward fairness — before leaving to become a criminal defense attorney and discovering what the justice system looks like from the other side of the courtroom. In this episode of Locked In with Ian Bick, he shares what being a Georgia prosecutor really required of him, why he left after seven years to defend the people he used to prosecute, what working Innocence Project cases and overturning twenty year wrongful conviction sentences actually involved, what the current problems with prosecutors in America actually look like from someone who spent seven years inside that world, and what representing people accused of the worst crimes available actually requires of the attorney who takes those cases.

Khallid Barber grew up in New York with a good family and a solid upbringing, went off to college, came home for break, got around the wrong crowd, and got involved in a club shooting he thought he got away with — until three weeks later cops showed up at his college and arrested him for attempted murder. In this episode of Locked In with Ian Bick, he shares what the arrest that interrupted everything actually felt like, what facing attempted murder charges as a college student actually involved, what three years inside Rikers Island and the New York state prison system actually required of him to survive, and what figuring out the work release program that gave him a path back actually looked like for someone who had a future before one night at a club changed everything.

Brian Burke got into corrections in his early twenties, spent four years working inside the New York state prison system, and then spent twenty-nine years as a New York court officer — experiencing the full spectrum of what the American justice system looks like from the person responsible for maintaining order in the room where it all happens. In this episode of Locked In with Ian Bick, he shares what four years in the New York state prison system taught him, what twenty-nine years as a court officer — the juries, the defendants, the prosecutors, the judges, and the heartbreaking and strangest moments the job produced — really looked like from the inside, and what his most significant professional experience actually involved: personally escorting Rex Heuermann — the Gilgo Beach serial killer — throughout his arrest, conviction, and sentencing, and what that specific proximity to one of the most disturbing criminal cases in recent New York history actually revealed about the person at the center of it.

Sasha Sweets grew up in California as a natural hustler — selling candy before moving to drugs, working at a strip club, and always chasing the finer things in life while her father was in prison for part of her childhood — before getting into a scamming operation with the father of her child in her early twenties that produced a federal indictment, 3.5 years in federal prison across California, Kentucky, and Arizona, and over $2 million in restitution.

Scott Gussin grew up in New York, lost his mother at seven years old in a moment that changed the direction of everything that followed, fell into selling weed and hash and LSD coming of age in the 1960s and 70s, and eventually built one of the most specific and most audacious international drug smuggling operations available — bringing hash from Morocco to the United States across a career that spanned thirty years before it finally ended.