VOIZES ARCHIVE

voizes.org
we.riseup.net/voizes

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE INCARCERATED
Today in the world, there are more people incarcerated than ever before in human history.
VOIZES is an international census of this prison experience. Through a collaborative archive of interviews with prisoners and ex-prisoners, VOIZES documents what prisoners have to say about the international prison industrial complex.

MISSION
This archive is a documentary project. It commits to memory first person descriptions of the inner workings of prison. It seeks to highlight both the parallels and differences of this experience between different countries and types of incarceration. The VOIZES archive is designed to function as a resource for the larger prison abolition debate. As a result, the archive is guided by a copyleft logic. We believe this material is most potent when it is shared and used in other projects, whether they be activist, documentary, academic, or journalistic in nature.

BASICS
Interviewee must have spent at least one month in a detention facility- prison, pre-trial detention, immigration detention center, forced detention in a psychiatric facility, or a youth detention center.
-All interviews are anonymous.
-Ongoing process of documentation.

VOIZES TEAM
The collective that administers and manages VOIZES is made up of journalists, artists, designers, photographers, activists and documentarians. But, we all share one thing- all of us have had personal interactions with the prison industrial complex. Some of us have had our brush with the law, others had or have loved ones currently incarcerated, and the rest of us have been involved in prison abolition campaigns or advocacy. None of us are convinced that incarceration or prisons more specifically are the best and only way to resolve social conflicts.

COLLABORATION
The VOIZES archive launched with a series of interviews recorded by the VOIZES TEAM. However, in order to maximize the reach of the project it is critical there be broader participation in the interview production process. The VOIZES TEAM understands the coordination of this collaborative participation as the group’s primary task. For more information on how you can collaborate please visit the DO IT YOURSELF page.