In 2006-2007 I received a fellowship to work with Laura Kurgan and the Spatial Information Design Lab in New Orleans. Working with community groups and charter schools in the Seventh Ward, Central City, and Broadmoor neighborhoods, we developed Million Dollar Blocks, a project that uses prison expenditure maps to incite changes in the way money is invested in communities. More than 2 million people are in jails and prisons in the U.S., and Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In many places the concentration is so dense that states spend over a million dollars per year to imprison residents of a single city block. At the same time, communities are continuously struggling to get funding and support for civic services that would provide more opportunities and prevent a life towards crime. These maps suggest a new way of looking at community investment and how these same criminal-justice dollars can be spent in better ways. The project worked with a justice reinvestment network of existing neighborhood organizations, including Cafe Reconcile, Safe Streets/Strong Communities and the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and established local pilot projects for youth training, health services, employment opportunities, and mentorship programs supported by justice reinvestment funding.
Credits: Project Director: Laura Kurgan. Project Coordinator: Steven Caputo, Research Associates: Johnna Cressica Brazier, Deborah Grossberg Katz. 2006 Fellows: Candy Chang. Andrew Colopy, Derek Lindner, Leah Meisterlin, Julia Molloy. This work builds upon a two year research project: Graphical Innovations in Justice Mapping, a collaboration between the Justice Mapping Center, the Spatial Information Design Lab and the JFA Institute. Project Team: Laura Kurgan, Eric Cadora (Project Directors), Sarah Williams, David Reinfurt. Invaluable research and thinking was also provided by the students in the GSAPP Advanced Studio, Spring 2007: Johnna Cressica Brazier, Steven Caputo, Jane Estrada, Laura Lee, Catie Liken, John G. Lloyd, Annemarie Scheel
Percent persons living in poverty per block group, 2000
Percent adults admitted to prison per block group, 2003
Prison expenditures per block in thousands of dollars, 2007
Justice reinvestment network in Central City, 2007
