We are interested in data covering a range of topics about the carceral system, including but not limited to number of humans held, facility statistics and offerings, and employee names, as well as public reports such as complaints, use of force, deaths in custody, etc.
In order to obtain this range of information, data is necessarily sourced using multiple methods, such as public records requests, automated and manual web scraping, and interviews. We also seek data collected by local, grassroots organizations that may be interested in collaborating or sharing narrative data from folks who are currently or formerly incarcerated.
We focus on California and Illinois datasets but intend to expand the work as it develops.