“Facing Life” by Pendarvis Harshaw & Brandon Tauszik
A strong challenge by author Pendarvis Harshaw and photographer/filmmaker Brandon Tauszik (beforehand featured right here). Funded by the Pulitzer Heart, Facing Life profiles 8 individuals who had been serving life sentences in California prisons however had been launched as a consequence of altering legal guidelines within the state. In 2006, California’s jail system housed greater than 170,000 folks. That’s 199% of the capability it was designed to carry and the best complete the state had ever seen. In 2011, the Supreme Court docket declared the overcrowded situations to be a violation of the Eighth Modification and quite a few items of laws had been handed to lower within the variety of folks behind bars. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, a whole bunch of inmates died and circumstances numbered within the hundreds, forcing the state to additional ramp up launch efforts.
As of February 2022, the state’s prisons held 98,000 folks (108% of the institutional capability). Nonetheless, what help there’s for these previously incarcerated as they reenter society nonetheless stays to be seen. That’s what Harshaw and Tauszik have spent the previous 4 years working to carry to gentle — what launch means for many who’ve spent many years in California’s jail system solely to be served with a distinct type of life, set adrift to navigate a brand new world crammed with smartphones, automated applied sciences, and a scarce housing market. As Harshaw writes:
“It’s vital to know that the folks profiled in Dealing with Life are a small instance of what mass incarceration in California has created. And because the state pushes to reverse course, it leaves the query to be requested: After time has been served, what do you do as soon as you might be free? This isn’t only a query for the people, however for the state as effectively. It’s time to not solely rectify the tough penalties of the previous, however to arrange for a society the place mass incarceration is not a factor—however mass integration is.”
Try Tauszik’s shifting portraits for the challenge under!
