Drag to move the map. Click the map once, then scroll to zoom. Facility records gathered through a collaborative research form, 2020 to 2025. Details are shown as contributors recorded them and may be out of date.
a work-in-progress, site is continually being updated
“The sun never knew” is an ongoing community, workshop series that builds on a public document of youth carceral facilities and youth advocacy organizations across the US. Beginning in the fall of 2020, I hosted a series of Community Mapping Workshops as part of the exhibition Deliberate Acts: Art and Incarceration at Vanderbilt University. In the workshops, students and colleagues from varying institutions (University of Washington, Vanderbilt University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Michigan State University, Vienna University of Applied Arts in Human Rights, Arizona State University) worked together to identify and research information on youth prisons in their respective areas. The workshop itself educates participants about the proximal and relational realities of incarceration such as the lack of educational and mental health services provided, limited visiting hours, and sentencing terms that arbitrarily vary across states. These workshops build upon an ongoing record of statistical and geographic information on facilities kept out of public view. I continue to map youth incarceration facilities and youth advocacy organizations with the help of workshop participants.
This work would not be possible without the generous research, time, and love of artists and scholars: alejandro t. acierto, Alex Vonhof, Jessie Gott, A. Sean Pue, Marilyn Volkman, and so many more.