Of the more than two million people in jails and prisons in the United States, a disproportionate number come from just a few neighborhoods in the country’s biggest cities. In 2006 many states were spending upwards of one million dollars annually to incarcerate residents from single city blocks. Using data from the criminal justice system, two New York–based research labs created maps of these “million-dollar blocks” in five cities. Kurgan, director of the Spatial Information Design Lab (now the Center for Spatial Research), explains that with the help of these maps “urban planners, designers, and policy makers can identify those areas in our cities where, without acknowledging it, we have allowed the criminal justice system to replace and displace a whole host of other public institutions.”
Gallery label from 2022
