“One of the overwhelming and heartbreaking themes of mass incarceration is dehumanization. Time and time again, these stories of what happens to prisoners in any of these systems gets buried under all of the legal jargon. And the back and forth in courts, the many steps that happen take power away from the incarcerated and erase the story of the individual,” Chloe Accardi tells ACM.
jail bars no stars no cars
just jail bars hard time
in the pen no friends cuz
they will do you in hard
time in the pen no friend
that what you get out of
doing hard time hard time
-Carvis Johnson, anthologized by Louis Bourgeois
(abolition/carceral state)
“As it relates to Unit 29 specifically, writing offered a rare opportunity to convey a message that would actually be read. For some, it was an opportunity to attempt something they never tried before. The act of writing and the program itself allowed for a structure by which they could order their lives in a chaos that barely ever sleeps,” Louis Bourgeois tells interviewer Mike Puican.
Another Chicago Magazine 