States of Incarceration

A “National Dialogue of Local Stories,” States of Incarceration is the first national traveling exhibition and coordinated public dialogue to explore the history and future of mass incarceration in the United States. Organized by the Humanities Action Lab at The New School and a coalition of 500 university students and formerly incarcerated individuals from twenty cities, the show launched in New York City in April 2016.

The exhibition and project, the culmination of two years of planning and discussion between the communities, is a national public reckoning with one of the most pressing issues facing our country. Using many tools of truth and reconciliation processes, the twenty communities explored the deep historical roots of incarceration, shared personal stories related to the issue, and strategized ways of enacting policy change.

In each location, the traveling exhibition and public programs focus on an issue of incarceration that is unique to that community. Skidmore College students, working with Professor Eric Morser in the fall 2015 course “Adventures in Public History: The Prison Project,” focused on Mount McGregor prison, closed by state officials in 2014.

The medium security facility had a long history of creative rehabilitation. In the 1910s, it was a tuberculosis sanitarium; after WWII, it welcomed convalescing veterans. As a prison it developed the state’s first Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment program. As the War on Drugs increased prison populations in the 1980s, and state politicians cut funding for carceral programs in the 1990s, teachers, counselors, and prisoners themselves empowered incarcerated men to change their lives. Programs provided incarcerated men with support to survive and thrive; ironically, many lost access to such support upon release.