In 2018, the Texas After Violence Project partnered with Texas Advocates for Justice, a criminal justice reform advocacy group led by formerly incarcerated people and their families, to continue the Life and Death in a Carceral State documentation project with a series of interviews on the impacts of incarceration on individuals and families. Generous funding from the Open Philanthropy Project has allowed us to facilitate free skills-based trainings for formerly incarcerated individuals and their families on how to conduct in-depth oral history interviews with people that have experienced violence and trauma, as well as trainings on how to operate audio-video equipment for on-camera interviews.
The goal of the Life and Death in a Carceral State project is to create space for people to tell their stories in their own words, in their own way, without fear of judgment or reprisal. While we asked our storytellers to guide the direction of their interviews, we also identified several areas of inquiry: life history and family background; experiences of loss, grief, trauma, and healing; interactions with police, investigators, prosecutors, corrections officers, victim advocates, and others associated with criminal justice systems; physical and mental health impacts of incarceration; barriers to successful and healthy reentry into society; how justice systems succeed or fail to meet the needs of those affected by violence or trauma; visions of justice and fairness in institutional responses to violence; and, finally, what the public needs to know about the impacts of criminal justice systems on individuals, families, and communities.
The Interviews
Starting in March of 2018, we recorded nineteen interviews with people who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system, and ultimately filmed more than forty-five hours of video footage. Nearly every interview was facilitated by a peer who had also experienced incarceration, and videography was also conducted by directly-impacted individuals when possible. As one interviewee put it, “the shared experiences . . . lends an added sensibility, sensitivity, and authenticity to each interview.” The interviews are both expansive and specific, covering the scope of a person’s life while also honing in on the minutiae of memories. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be adding these interviews to our online archive and sharing them across social media. Meanwhile, please take a look at our existing collection by visiting our digital archive here.
Publication
Last year, we created a publication to highlight the first interviews we did as part of the project, Life and Death in a Carceral State. We recently updated this booklet to include some of the interviews conducted this spring, and are planning more publications as we work with narrators to share their interviews with the public.
Multimedia Workshop
As the project progressed, we realized that we had captured something amazing over the course of these forty-five hours and that the interviews held possibilities far beyond the confines of our online archive. We decided to hold a multimedia storytelling workshop for a small group of TAJ members who participated in the project as interviewers, interviewees, and videographers. Over the course of two days, ten participants came together to learn about different methods of multimedia storytelling, and to brainstorm and plan digital projects to share these interviews more broadly with the world. From podcasts to stage plays, the ideas were plentiful, and we hope you continue to follow this project as we realize some of these project ideas over the coming months. Stay tuned.
