ARCHIVING THE SOCIAL LIFE OF MASS INCARCERATION

The United States incarcerates the world’s largest prison population, caging surveilling and supervising more people than any other nation. The Mass Incarceration Lab @CSREA seeks to curate a comprehensive archive of mass incarceration in the United States– centering and perserving 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 first-person accounts of mass incarceration for generations to come and centering the voices of those who have been impacted.

The Mass Incarceration Lab is a Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity initiative generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Exhibits

Explore collections of oral histories, art, and correspondence

Oral Histories

Letters from the Inside

Our Team

Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve

Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Brown University and an affiliated scholar with the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, IL. She is an affiliated fellow with Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (CSREA). She is the author of Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court (2016) and The Waiting Room (2018). She is the generator and faculty lead for the Mass Incarceration Lab @ CSREA, generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Nina Johnson

Nina Johnson is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Program in Black Studies at Swarthmore College. She is a scholar of inequality, politics, race culture, stratification, and mobility, and she is an experienced educator and collaborator with students and scholars who are incarcerated in U.S. prisons. She is the Mass Incarceration Humanities Lab Fellow, contributing her expertise as a prison educator in identifying and collecting materials for the archive.

Esteem Brumfield

Esteem Brumfield is the Research Director for the Mass Incarceration Lab @ CSREA. His work examines the relationship between incarceration, mental health, and public health outcomes. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Public Health at Brown University. Prior to pursuing his Masters, Esteem served as a Public Health Commissioner for Alameda County and reviewed health effects of incarceration within the county. He holds a Bachelors from the University of California, Berkeley.

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