Lee Jupina. Game Day, 2015. 7 x 8 1⁄2 inches. Pen on Bristol board. Collection of Jeffrey Greene
The United States prison industrial complex is firmly rooted in the legalisation of slavery. For over 150 years, those rightfully and wrongfully imprisoned have been forced to endure conditions that violate human rights, their fates given over to the government and private corporations.
.
In the past week, stories of egregious violations at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn and Cook County Jail in Chicago have gone viral, revealing just a fraction of the brutality that largely goes unreported in the news. In much the same way, there are also successful rehabilitation stories that rarely get told.
.
Jeffrey Green, manager of the Prison Arts Program for the Community Partners in Action (CPA), is aiming to rectify this problem – creating a non-profit organisation that works with current and former inmates in Connecticut’s prison system.
.
The CPA was originally founded in 1875 as the Prisoners’ Friends Society by a group of notable citizens invested in social reform. This included Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), who called out the school-to-prison pipeline by astutely observing: “Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other.”
.
Read the Full Story at Huck Online
.
Joseph Castellano. When I Was Young, 2007. 8 1⁄2 x 11 inches. Pen, colored pencil on paper. Collection of Jeffrey Greene.