NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Lifestyle

Life after prison, on YouTube

By Amelia Tait
New York Times·
7 Nov, 2019 04:00 AM6 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Christina Randall, 35, makes YouTube videos about life in prison and the challenges of re-entry. She sees her channel as a platform for education and reform. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times

Christina Randall, 35, makes YouTube videos about life in prison and the challenges of re-entry. She sees her channel as a platform for education and reform. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times

Christina Randall wanted to become a social worker once she got out of jail. She didn't expect to reach so many people.

In May 2008, when Christina Randall was released from prison after serving nearly three years for battery, robbery and escape, she had nothing but US$30 ($47) and the brand-new, ill-fitting clothes on her back. She took up in a women's shelter in South Florida, eight hours away from her friends and family, with a plan to start fresh.

First, she got a job as a line cook at Wendy's. "I worked my butt off cooking chicken nuggets and French fries" in order to save for a car, Randall, 35, said. Then she enrolled in an undergraduate program, where she studied social work while employed as a janitor. "I've always wanted to help people," she said.

But after graduation, she couldn't get hired; history always seemed to get in the way. Once, she said, she was offered a role working with children, but the organisation promptly rescinded the offer after running a background check. "I went home and cried for like three days," she said. "I felt like I'd hit a brick wall."

One of Randall's prison beauty hacks involves using Dorito dust as lipstick. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times
One of Randall's prison beauty hacks involves using Dorito dust as lipstick. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

For a long time, Randall didn't think she would ever get to do the work. Then she started a YouTube channel. In the three years since, she's brought more than 400,000 subscribers — "my lovelies, my beauties, my friends," as she calls them in her videos. She's a lot like other creators in the lifestyle category, except that in addition to sharing beauty tips, wedding-day memories and unboxing videos, she also talks candidly about life behind bars and the process of reentry.

Randall is one of a handful of former prisoners building an audience on YouTube. She has explained the "unspoken rules of prison," showed her viewers how to turn coffee grounds and water into makeshift jailhouse mascara and interviewed a former correctional officer about corruption among prison guards. But most important, she has offered an empathic, first-person perspective on incarceration.

"I have a lot of sons, mothers, daughters, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents of people in prison who watch my videos to understand better what the person might be going through," she said.

A photo of Randall that was taken while she was in prison. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times
A photo of Randall that was taken while she was in prison. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times

Most of Randall's viewers are American, in the 18-to-34 age bracket and women (92 per cent, according to data from YouTube). Some of them send fan mail. This year, Randall received a note from a woman who saw her story as a cautionary tale. "I was starting to walk a bad path and I started to hang around the wrong sort of people," the viewer wrote, "but seeing your videos and hearing your story helped me find the right path and better friends."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Dr. Aaron Balick, a psychotherapist and the author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking, said that there are "pros and cons" to people like Randall sharing their stories online with a potential audience of millions. "It offers access and insights into people's experiences and stories that may be otherwise difficult to access," he said. "This can increase an individual's sense of belonging and inclusion, and decrease a sense of loneliness or isolation."

"The downside," Balick continued, "is that we cannot be sure about the narratives that are being produced. Are they honest? Are there commercial or other attention-seeking incentives that pull the story away from authenticity?"

Discover more

Lifestyle

Meet the woman who made millions eating giant crabs for YouTube

13 Jun 05:00 AM
Lifestyle

What if being a YouTube celebrity is actually backbreaking work?

10 Jul 10:13 PM
Travel

The deadly mistake Kiwis make on holiday

22 Jul 06:00 PM
Business

YouTube is a big business. Just how big is anyone's guess

24 Jul 10:14 PM
Randall, with Jessie, editing a video for her channel. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times
Randall, with Jessie, editing a video for her channel. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times

Randall earns money from the ads that play alongside her videos and also has about 270 donors on Patreon who each pay at least US$5 ($8) a month for access to extra content. Her videos are her main source of income, but she doesn't believe that making money compromises her channel's integrity. "My channel is raw and real," she said. "I am brutally honest with these people."

Patrons who pay Randall US$50 ($80) a month get one-on-one Skype chats with the YouTuber, while those who pay US$10 ($15) get priority when they private message her. Emily Salisbury, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Nevada, said that she sees "nothing wrong" with Randall's being financially compensated for her work and that her online community could be invaluable for former prisoners.

"One of the things that oftentimes happens when somebody is released from prison is that they're told that they can't hang out with other known offenders. That really harms women in particular, because women are so relationally based," Salisbury said. She also said that the videos, which have a casual, friendly feel, could be more effective than outreach programs led by professionals who may be perceived, by people who have been in the system, "as just not getting it."

Since 1978, women's incarceration has climbed at twice the rate of men's in the United States, with 834% more women locked up than 40 years ago, according to a report from the Prison Policy Initiative. "There are far too many women who are incarcerated who don't need to be," Salisbury said.

Randall inscribed a note in her son Jaden's lunchbox. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times
Randall inscribed a note in her son Jaden's lunchbox. Photo / Eve Edelheit, The New York Times

Randall is passionate not just about changing the fortunes of individuals but also about changing the system. "We absolutely need prison reform. Look at our recidivism rate," she said. (According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 2005 to 2014, five out of six state prisoners were arrested within nine years of their release.) "It's labelled the Department of Corrections, but they're not correcting anything," Randall continued.

She is seen, by her subscribers, as both a truth-teller and a healer. Her own rehabilitation, she says, took place when a church group visited her prison in 2007.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"I remember thinking it was ridiculous," she said. "Everyone was just standing up and singing about God, and I started feeling these tears well up in my eyes and thinking, 'Oh heck no, I am not doing this.' I didn't cry when I was sentenced or when I went to prison. I was hard, I wasn't going to cry. Now they got me in the church, are you kidding me?"

The process continued on the outside. About a year after her release, Randall reunited with one of her high school crushes and became a stepmother to his son Jordan, who is now 18. The couple's second son, Jaden, is 8 years old and has his own YouTube channel, with 4,000 subscribers. He posts videos about regular kid stuff like school, as well as back-flip tutorials.

Viewed together, their channels present an optimistic but realistic view of reentry. "It's a beautiful life on this side," Randall said. "I know. I'm living it."


Written by: Amelia Tait

Photographs by: Eve Edelheit

© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
Lifestyle

For the love of bread: Why Orewa locals are queuing up at Romeo's

05 Jul 02:01 AM
Lifestyle

From the beat to the beauty pageant: West Auckland cop named Miss Universe NZ

05 Jul 01:00 AM
Lifestyle

School holidays dragging on? Try this fun kitchen activity for kids

05 Jul 12:00 AM

Sponsored: Get your kids involved in your reno

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
For the love of bread: Why Orewa locals are queuing up at Romeo's

For the love of bread: Why Orewa locals are queuing up at Romeo's

05 Jul 02:01 AM

Diogo Riedi's grandmother taught him to make bread in a wood-fired oven in Brazil.

From the beat to the beauty pageant: West Auckland cop named Miss Universe NZ

From the beat to the beauty pageant: West Auckland cop named Miss Universe NZ

05 Jul 01:00 AM
School holidays dragging on? Try this fun kitchen activity for kids

School holidays dragging on? Try this fun kitchen activity for kids

05 Jul 12:00 AM
Boss Babe to Bali bride: Iyia Liu’s $120K clifftop nuptials

Boss Babe to Bali bride: Iyia Liu’s $120K clifftop nuptials

04 Jul 11:00 PM
Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper
sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP