From Slavery To Jail

Last calendar week Spencer Baucke created a really faithful interactive reproduction of an 1860 Census Slavery Map. The master copy map, on which Spencer's map is based, was made inwards 1861 past times the the States Census Office "for the produce goodness of ill together with wounded soldiers". The map was based on information from the 1860 together with shows the distribution of slaves inwards the southern United States. You tin move sentiment the master copy map online at the Library of Congress website.


Last twelvemonth The Pudding used the same information used inwards the 1860 Slavery Map to explore the legacy of slavery on modern incarceration rates inwards the United States. The Pudding's The Shape of Slavery allows yous to sentiment the 1860 distribution of slaves inwards the Southern States amongst introduce solar daytime incarceration rates inwards each state.

America likes to position people behind bars. The NAACP reports that 21% of the entire world's prison theatre population is living inwards American jails. This propensity to lock upwards its citizens affects African Americans to a greater extent than than closed to other Americans. The NAACP says that African Americans are incarcerated at nearly v times the charge per unit of measurement of white Americans.

There is a geographical component at play inwards these incarceration rates. The Prison Policy Initiative states that "the South has consistently had a higher charge per unit of measurement of incarceration than the other regions of the United States". The Pudding decided to explore if at that topographic point was whatsoever connective betwixt the high charge per unit of measurement of incarceration inwards Southern states together with the legacy of slavery. By mapping 150 years of census together with incarceration information they wanted to run across if historic incarceration rates differ betwixt the old slave states together with the non-slave states of the North.

They do. The Pudding concludes that "we nevertheless run across the shadow of the undeniable, institutionalized, strategic racism of the 100 years later the Civil War".