Scot Sothern’s black and white photographs of prostitutes in Los Angeles. 

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Visualizing Punishment by Sarah Shannon and Chris Uggen

Four decades ago, the United States launched a grand policy experiment. The nation began locking up an unprecedented share of its citizens, increasing its rate of incarceration by more than 400% over the period.

I had a chance to see Sarah Shannon’s job talk at my university this past year. She did a great job, and this article gets to some of the points that she was forced to omit because of time restraints. 

Check out the article for more graphic representations of incarceration rates.

Gotta love research.

Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars and Their Careers

For the first time, a massive data set of 10,000 porn stars has been extracted from the world’s largest database of adult films and performers. I’ve spent the last six months analyzing it to discover the truth about what the average performer looks like, what they do on film, and how their role has evolved over the last forty years.

By Jon Millward

Heartbreaking. These individuals are so strong. 

Somayeh Mehri, 29, and her 3-year-old daughter Ra’na had a bucket of acid poured on them by Somayeh’s husband while they slept. Somayeh lost her ability to see and Ra’na lost one of her eyes.

Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi

Yoko Ono posing behind her artwork ‘A Hole’ (a pane of glass with a bullet hole pierced through by a gun shot). 

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Since 1973, 141 people in 26 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. 

Innocent people who were almost put to death for crimes they did not commit. 

Death Penalty Information Center

Detailed Photos of Cold War Missile Sites: Opposing Superpowers, Same Terror

Justin Barton shoots former Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launch sites that were on both sides of the Cold War. The photos are graphically composed, interior details of the sites, a study of the infrastructure humans use to address existential military threats.

Is It Time to Treat Violence Like a Contagious Disease?

Interesting read, but the short answer is absolutely not. A disease model of violent crime is detrimental to the study of crime. Nice metaphor, but this is nowhere near academic worthiness. Mere exposure to violence does not account for enough variance in violent behaviors. Applying a disease model to violent crime or violence oversimplifies the phenomena and discredits the vast archive of criminological research on violence that has been established.

‘People often don’t have an answer why violence goes up or down. Sometimes it’s because of the epidemic nature.’

People Criminological researchers frequently do have answers to why violence goes up or down. But most of the explanations are academic-heavy and not readily available to the public. There wasn’t a single criminologist or sociologist interviewed or cited in the article. Again, interesting read, but the disease model of violence is a pop-crime concept and is not supported in the academic literature. 

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin- The Prestige of Terror

The first time I tried to end my life my father had just finished brutally pounding my mother. I felt horrified, angry and helpless. I don’t remember the specifics of that particular attack, but I do remember my response. Eleven years or so of life had begun to feel like an eternity of pain, and I wanted out quickly. So I moved toward the window in the small bedroom that I shared with my three younger sisters and, with mournful tears in my eyes, announced that I was going to jump. I thought that my leap would distract my father long enough to stop him from punching my mother in her face. I wanted him to stop. And I prayed to God to take him or me. Either way, I wanted out.

…

But shit tends to get real bad when heroes fall from grace. Before too long, a young Black boy was tutored on what it meant to be a Black man in the hood growing up in White America. He learned, like so many other Black men in my life, that those who aren’t meant to survive have the tendency of becoming experts in the practice of destroying self and others. My mother eventually left my father. My sisters and I are, she still asserts, are “gifts” that she and, yes, my father created together.

But what gifts were bestowed upon him, aside from the gifts of struggle and self-destruction?

This is the paradox that frames our existence and survival as Black men today. We live—some of us—despite the incessant negativity and violence that often surrounds and harms us, contested public policies and problematic state policies that attempt to define and malign us, or the condemnatory words of some faith leaders and families that weaken and kill us.

We die—some of us—because of the same.

approachingsignificance:

11 Stunning Facts About America’s Prisons

1. In 2009 there were 7.2 million people in prison and under official supervision like probation — a larger population than the state of Washington
2. Between 1987 and 2007 the national prison population tripled.
3. 4 in 10 prisoners return to state prisons within three years of release.
4. One in 30 men between 20 and 34 is behind bars — and up to one in 13 in one state.
5. One in nine black men between 20 and 34 are behind bars.
6. 734 out of every 100,000 people are behind bars in the U.S. — far and away the highest number in the world.
7. The United States is the world’s largest jailer. Russia and South Africa are the closest, but the rates drop dramatically after that.
8. Part of the bizarre prison black market, a thimbleful of tobacco can fetch up to $50 at a maximum security prison.
9. Typically parole programs cost taxpayers $7.47 per day per parolee, while prisons cost $78.95 per day per inmate nationwide.
10. Some prisoners cost more. It costs New Jersey $253 million every year to house just its death row prisoners — $11 million apiece.
11. Between 1987 and 2007 state prison costs rose by 315 percent to $44.06 billion a year.