Project Leader : Yuzi Nakamura

Overview

The Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration (CADBI) is an organization fighting the life-without-parole sentence in Pennsylvania. This group has access to a spreadsheet of all 5000+ lifers in the prison system through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. They asked us to prepare visualizations of that data for use by lawyers working for the organization, to display at a recent art show event, and for materials that the organization can use in the future.

Results

We identified several aspects of the spreadsheet and other public information that can be translated into well articulated and illustrated concerns, and graphed them. Of particular interest to us were:

How old the lifer population is Racial disparities in sentencing Economic impact of sentencing people for life

Future work

We will continue working with CADBI in order to develop more complete, impactful representations of the effects of life-without-parole sentencing that help CADBI effectively lobby against a sentence that refuses to consider second chances or rehabilitation.