Monday Map: A City's Disappearing Population

by Matt Kelley · 2008-12-22 05:34:00 UTC
Topics:


Today's map looks at the effect of mass incarceration on America's inner cities. In recent years, the great work of the Justice Mapping Center has given us a compelling visual perspective on the devastating effects our prison explosion have had on communities in the inner cities.

The map above, from JMC's study of New York City, reveals a stark picture - just a few small neighborhoods make up most of the population of city residents sent to prison. The circled areas above have just 17% of the city's male residents, but 50% of its male prisoners. In two districts just above Harlem, 6% of men are sent upstate. JMC has coined the term "million-dollar blocks" for single city blocks where the city is spending over $1 million to incarcerate former residents, and JMC director Eric Cadora wondered to the New York Daily News last year whether this was the best way to spend a million bucks.

"If you had $1 million and 23 criminals on one block, what would you do?" asked Cadora. "Would you spend it all on sending them away for three or four years and have them come back? Or would you think about other ways of diversifying your investment?"

For dozens of fascinating maps -- on crime and incarceration in Arizona, Kansas, England and more -- visit the Justice Mapping Center site.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Weekend Roundup: A Taste of Freedom
NEXT STORY:
DJJ Won't Let Youth Into Meeting about Prison Conditions

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.