“Why We Punish” is a public education campaign currently being planned by The Prison Studies Project and The Applied Cartooning Lab. The Prison Studies Project was born out of Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice. The PSP’s mission is to awaken the widest possible audience to the ways we punish, and to reimagine justice in the United States.
In April of 2022, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Prison Studies Project, and The Applied Cartooning Lab gathered cartoonists, educators, formerly incarcerated people, public policy experts, journalists, and public defenders to discuss the complexities of carceral punishment in the United States.
Together we brainstormed ways to educate a broad audience about the historical causes and current consequences of mass incarceration. We walked away with a vision to produce a multi-dimensional public education campaign that interrogates our deepest convictions about crime and punishment, empowers people to imagine justice differently, and plans to connect people with social organizations and institutions that are currently supporting incarcerated people, returning citizens, and their families.