Aerial Photos Expose the American Prison System’s Staggering Scale

BY PETE BROOK 

There are some 2.2 million people behind bars in the United States. That’s more people than there are in all of New Mexico. And there are more jails and prisons than colleges and universities in this country. Still, it can be difficult to grasp the scale of incarceration in America, in part because so many of these facilities are tucked away far from view in rural areas.

Josh Begley’s project Prison Map provides a sense of the enormity of it all by giving us a fascinating vantage point from which to view the architecture of incarceration. Begley’s created a vast visual compendium of the nation’s jails and prisons, comprising more than 5,300 aerial images that offer a compelling metaphor for the rapid expansion of the American prison system.

“Prison Map is about visualizing carceral space,” says Begley. “We have terms like the ‘prison industrial complex’ but what does that actually look like? If you were to stitch together all these spaces of exception, how might they appear from above?”

To create Prison Map, Begley coded a script that plugged the known coordinates of prisons and jails nationwide into the Google Maps API. When he ran the script, it snapped a photo of every county jail, state prison, federal penitentiary, immigration detention facility and private prison—more than 5,300 in all.

Since 1980, the US prison population has exploded from fewer than 500,000 to more than 2.2 million. That’s prompted a prison building boom, mostly in rural America. As a consequence, many of these facilities are located in small towns, deserts, and remote corners of states with lots of space. They’re out of sight, and out of mind.  Prison Map reveals this vast hidden infrastructure.

The rapid expansion of the country’s prison system has brought with it the rise of the supermax prison—austere facilities designed specifically to keep prisoners in solitary confinement for indefinite periods. The first modern supermax, Pelican Bay State Prison at the northernmost end of California, was built in 1989. It provided the model for 60 others across the nation. In recent years, public debate about American prisons has focused particularly on the psychological trauma caused by prolonged isolation.

It is estimated that there are now more than 6,000 jails and prisons nationwide. One in 100 American adults is incarcerated, and US taxpayers spend $70 billion each year keeping them behind bars. These people are disproportionately the poor and people of color. Such things may not be readily apparent from Begley’s satellite images, but they were clearly his motivation for the project.

“If the United States is in the business of warehousing black and brown bodies, I think it’s important to sketch the contours of what that means,” he says.

Prison Map discloses the weight, isolation and expanse of the American prison system. The fascinating, almost beguiling patterns of these prisons belie the often brutal environments within them. This tension makes Begley’s project an important hack and vital work of art.

Josh Begley’s series is part of the group exhibition ‘Prison Obscura’, curated by contributor Pete Brook, opening at Parsons in February 2015.

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/josh-begley-prison-map/