Patrick Bates

Community Researcher for Documenting Prison Education and the Arts and Confronting Conditions of Confinement. After spending his life inside correctional facilities across the state of Michigan, Patrick Bates came home to change a pattern of systematic slavery and death by incarceration. He has worked on several projects with various organizations based on reforming and abolishing a system of which he was a victim. The advocacy groups with which he has worked include the University of Michigan Carceral State Project, #UMBehindBars, Prison Creative Arts Project, and American Civil Liberties Union.