DCC has published two infographics about the experiences of incarcerated people in the Wayne County Jail between 1968 and 1971. Created for the DCC-Mellon partnership and its Detroit as a Carceral Space research initiative by Dominic Coschino, working with designer Rinika Prince (Architecture) and Matt Lassiter (co-coordinator of Detroit as a Carceral Space).
Infographic #1 for “We Live 24/7 in Hell” synthesizes key information and visuals from the investigative report. In the overcrowded jail–declared “unfit for human habitation” by a watchdog group in 1968–people arrested for minor offenses or for no crime at all slept on the floor amid raw sewage, faced beatings from the “goon squad,” were thrown into “the hole” for complaints, and on multiple occasions committed suicide.
Infographic #2 for “We Live 24/7 in Hell” combines an architectural reconstruction of a cell block in the Wayne County Jail with eight firsthand accounts of people incarcerated there. By 1971, 85% of those held in the jail were African American, and 90% were poor. Their testimonies describe guilty pleas just to escape the jail (by going to prison), miscarriages, attempted suicides, brutality and racist abuse, and deprivation of medical care.
