The Carceral State Project (CSP) is a research and advocacy collaboration based at the University of Michigan and dedicated to confronting the forces of criminalization, confinement, and control in the modern United States. The CSP connects academic researchers—including faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates—with impacted communities, advocacy organizations, and other allies. CSP is a multidisciplinary and multifaceted investigation of the historical and contemporary conditions of state violence, incarceration, policing, immigrant detention, and the ongoing struggles against these and other forms of carceral control in the state of Michigan and in the United States.

“Detroit as a Carceral Space” is a CSP research initiative in partnership with the Michigan-Mellon Project on the Egalitarian Metropolis. In 2021, the initiative published a major multimedia investigation of historical and contemporary processes of racial capitalism and wealth extraction, “Detroit’s Carceral Landscape: Police, Politics, and Profit in America’s Blackest City—And How Detroiters Are Reimagining the Future.” Additional investigative reports have explored the history of resistance by incarcerated people inside the Wayne County Jail during the 1960s and 1970s; the current Project Green Light surveillance technology deployed by the Detroit Police Department and private businesses; the history of police violence and Black community activism in the city of Detroit since the 1950s; and a range of historically informed commentary in newspapers, magazines, and other public forums.