Interesting read.
Here is the introduction
HLS’ basement houses several prison periodicals housed in Harvard’s archives, and when Jessica N. Chapel found them, they were in dire need of preservation.
BY MAEVE T. BRENNAN AND CIANA J. KING
In the basement of the Harvard Law School is a box containing the pages of the Angolite – an award-winning prison newspaper covering topics from prison policy to the societal cost of mass incarceration. The pages are filled with block print illustrations and showcase poetry written by prisoners alongside policy briefs and legislative debate. After decades in storage, the pages are crumbling, acidic, and improperly cataloged. And it’s not just the Angolite — HLS’ basement houses several prison periodicals housed in Harvard’s archives, and when Jessica N. Chapel found them, they were in dire need of preservation.
In 2019, Chapel, former Harvard Law School librarian and archivist for digital projects, began working on a project called “Prison Newspapers” to digitize and submit publications by prisoners to the American Prison Newspapers – a larger project by the organization Reveal Digital — that solicits periodicals published by incarcerated people over the last 200 years from all 50 states, representing penal institutions of all kinds, with special attention paid to women-only institutions.
“There’s just something in all of these newspapers that just really speaks to that very human impulse to tell stories, to share information, to connect with each other. I don’t know that I can really say there’s one thing in particular that just stands out to me. It’s the whole endeavor,” Chapel says. “These are people whose bodies bore the weight of law.”
Read full article
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/9/30/HLS-prison-periodicals-project/
