While more than two million people are currently incarcerated in the United States, Black and Latinx communities are affected disproportionately by the prison industrial complex. For generations, families have been torn apart leaving few untouched by a system that amounts to legalised slavery under the 13th amendment.
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Coming of age during the 1980s and early 90s, the subject hit close to home for curator and author Nicole R. Fleetwood. “So many forces coalesced to restructure Black life—our homes, families, institutions, neighbourhoods. I felt like my community was under siege,” she says, “As a teenager, I worried all the time about people I knew—that they would end up jobless, on crack, in prison.”
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“I remember the horror of younger people going to prison for longer periods of time. It was collectively traumatising. There are now tens of thousands of middle-aged people in prison who have been there for decades, sentenced as teenagers.”
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