[Co-Creator] Joanne DeCaro
[Keywords] Incarceration, COVID-19, Archive, Testimonials
[Project Description] Prisons across the United States have been the sites of some of the largest outbreaks of COVID-19. In California, home to one of the nation’s largest prison systems, there have been nearly 50,000 COVID-19 cases in state prisons, corresponding to an infection rate of more than one in two people, and 224 deaths.
UCI PrisonPandemic is a digital archive to capture and preserve the stories of people who are incarcerated in California prisons, their family members and loved ones, and the employees who work in these facilities. This living archive, composed of recorded calls and letters, tracks people’s stories across time (with retrospective accounts from the start of the pandemic and moving forward) and place (across all 35 California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation facilities). PrisonPandemic is led by faculty and graduate students who study prisons, health, and inequality.
