Exposing intersectionalities: a reflection on mental health and incarceration in America

ABSTRACT The traveling exhibition States of Incarceration: A National Dialogue of Local Histories explores the past, present, and future of mass incarceration in the United States through the lens of local narratives, events, and historic and/or contemporary sites. Over 500 students from 20 universities worked together to stimulate a national dialog focused on how mass incarceration has shaped the social definitions of citizenship, criminality, confinement, and economy. As each university investigated a local example of one of these themes and its effect on their nearby community, 16 graduate students from Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI), supported by Indiana Humanities and the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, used a wide variety of research methods to study the history of confinement and mental illness in Indianapolis, Indiana. Through site visits, theoretical studies, interviews with people involved in the criminal justice and mental healthcare systems, archival research, and community partnerships, our research question, asking why prisons have become the nation’s mental healthcare facilities, began to take shape.