Captive State - by Eric Seiferth & Nick Weldon & Katherine Jolliff Dunn & Kevin T Harrell (Paperback)

About the Book

"Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration is a book adaptation of the groundbreaking exhibition at the Historic New Orleans Collection which ran from July 2024 to February 2025. The book presents a chronological narrative, beginning with the founding of Louisiana, explaining how, over the course of more than 300 years, the state has come to be recognized as the incarceration capital of the world. The book augments this narrative by highlighting some of the exhibition's key objects, data visualizations, and profiles of Louisianians impacted by the interrelated systems of slavery and incarceration over the course of the state's history. More than a memoir of the exhibition, the book will serve as a source document that can be used by advocates, reformers, and educators alike"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

For decades, Louisiana has had the highest incarceration rate in the United States. If it were a country, it would have the second-highest incarceration rate in the world. Far from a modern phenomenon, this distinction is rooted in more than three centuries of history--roots that extend out from the principal city of New Orleans, once the epicenter of the American slave trade, to the agricultural fields of the Louisiana State Prison, commonly known as Angola. In its examination of the state's long march toward confining more of its citizens than almost anywhere on earth, Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration arrives at an irrefutable truth: that the institutions of slavery and mass incarceration are historically linked.

Adapted from the groundbreaking exhibition of the same name, Captive State traces the evolution of laws and customs that created this carceral system and that, by design, have disproportionately harmed Black Louisianians. Captive State accentuates this narrative with profiles of people impacted by these systems, spotlights on key historical objects, and insightful data visualizations. As the human and financial costs continue to mount, this book details the choices that led us here--and asks whether Louisiana is fated to remain captive to its history.

Captive State is supported by a grant from Borealis Philanthropy's Spark Justice Fund. Distributed for the Historic New Orleans Collection

About the Author

Eric Seiferth is a curator/historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC). Kevin T. Harrell, PhD, is a collections cataloger at HNOC. Katherine Jolliff Dunn is a curatorial cataloger at HNOC. Nick Weldon is an editor at HNOC, and is coauthor of Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana.