Elizabeth Hinton along with several other esteemed academics and scholars recently agreed to serve as advisors for the Vanguard Carceral Journalism Guild.
Ten incarcerated writers will be trained and platformed as part of the guild.
Hinton is a Professor of History and African American Studies at Yale University and a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is the Co-Director of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, and the author of America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960’s (2021), and From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (2016).
Hinton talks with Everyday Injustice about the upcoming project and her role in it.
As Hinton explains: “The Vanguard Carceral Journalism Guild is something that is completely one of a kind and that it’s amplifying original on-the-ground reporting by people who reside in confinement.”
She adds, “I think one of the things that’s really exciting about it is that it’s not just targeting people on the outside, but it’s also seeking to inform and ground conversations and movements, ideas that are happening on the inside.
“Because there are intentional barriers erected between people who reside in the carceral state and those of us who live outside of it, it’s really hard to get a sense of what is going on. I think most people who aren’t connected to people who are incarcerated have no idea the kinds of conditions that are maintained, have no idea the kinds of violence that structures the entire system in every iota and every form. Have no idea the kinds of human rights abuses that are happening and the politics that are happening, as well as the amazing initiatives, the self activity that’s going on inside prisons.”
Listen as Elizabeth Hinton discusses the importance of carceral journalism and what this project will mean.
