Barrios Unidos Prison Project Visits Campus
The Office of Community is pleased to host Barrios Unidos on April 12, 2018.
Barrios Unidos' mission is to promote multicultural social justice, nonviolence and economic equity through cultural healing, civic leadership and youth & community development. Based in the Santa Cruz, for forty years they have provided culturally-driven and spiritually-informed services to youth and adults within marginalized communities. Their services are both preventative and restorative, which has called us to environments from middle schools to maximum security facilities.
The Barrios Unidos Prison Project has constructed a prison cell that can be utilized to teach and inform diverse segments of the population: youth, judges, educators, policy makers, and community members. In constructing an interactive prison cell, we hope to bring insight and awareness on the realities of incarceration. It will provide an opportunity for individuals to step into the environment, giving a sense of what it is like to be incarcerated. We hope to encourage people to support alternatives to incarceration policy and legislation.
The model is a traveling interactive replica of a prison cell and visiting room. Barrios Unidos has been bringing the model to schools, universities, courthouses, conferences, and other educational events. It includes literature on the consequences of incarceration, prison policy, the prison industrial complex, alternatives to incarceration, the economics of incarceration, as well other pertinent information and statistics. Not only are participants able to sit in the confines of the cell, to add to the sensory experience, the participants hear audio recordings of the on-going, day-to-day sounds of prison life. Staff from Barrios Unidos will be on hand to provide further context.
The exhibit will be on display on the Academic Quad from 11 am - 2 pm followed by a talk by members of Barrios Unidos at 7 pm in Mosher 1.
Co-sponsored by Remsen Bird and the Office of the Dean of Students.
