Carceral History Episodes
The History of the Cook County Jail
Feb. 6, 2023
The first Cook County Jail was a wooden stockade, built in 1833 in Chicago, which was then a town of around 250 people. Today, the Cook County Department of Corrections, which takes up 8 city blocks on the Southwest Side of …
The Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village
June 13, 2022
The 12-story Women’s House of Detention, situated in the heart of Greenwich Village in New York City, from 1932 to 1974, was central to the queer history of The Village. The House of D, as it was known, housed such inmates a…
Migrant Incarceration and the 1985 El Centro Hunger Strike
July 19, 2021
In 1945, United States immigration officials opened the El Centro Immigration Detention Camp in El Centro, California, to be an administrative holding center for unauthorized Mexican migrants, many of whom had been working o…