Mass Incarceration Archive

The United States incarcerates the world’s largest prison population, caging, surveilling and supervising more people than any other nation. The Mass Incarceration Lab seeks to curate a comprehensive archive of mass incarceration in the United States–centering and preserving the narratives and writings of those individuals (including family and community members) who have been impacted by the criminal justice system. 

It is through their oral testimony and writings that we understand the “living history” of mass incarceration and its legacies. Ultimately, this humanities lab project is an important act of historical preservation, capturing the first-person accounts of mass incarceration for generations to come and centering the voices of those who have been impacted. 

The project received startup funds through CSREA in 2021. CDS started working on the project in Fall of 2021. The project is a multi-year digital humanities project that will create a variety of assets (interviews, physical documents, born-digital documents, video, audio, etc.) that will need to be preserved.

Contributors to this project include Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve (PI), Tarika Sankar (CDS Lead), Ashley Champagne, Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, Justin Uhr, Jennifer Betts, Cody Carvel, Patrick Rashleigh, Elizabeth Yalkut, Digital Services & Collection Services, Special Collections