Photos: New Alcatraz Exhibit Showcases the Hidden Costs of Incarceration

For years, San Francisco's former island prison, Alcatraz, has made its reputation mostly on famous escapes and infamous people.

Now a new exhibit, one of its first new permanent showcases in decades, is highlighting injustices in the U.S. mass-incarceration system.

It’s called “The Big Lockup: Mass Incarceration in the United States." Free with admission, it's the first major permanent exhibit on the island in 30 years. The exhibit is a self-guided experience that uses text, photographs and interactive content to inform audiences about the history of incarceration in the U.S.

Its exhibits explicitly question the criminal justice system, with panels that say "Who is harmed?" and "Can we do better?"

“We have a new impetus here to try to make Alcatraz relevant to conditions in the country today, as well as to move away from the Hollywood image of Alcatraz to more relevant issues and to get people thinking about these issues in a critical way," said Will Elder, a spokesperson for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

The exhibit features infographics explaining how the war on drugs and systemic racism has disproportionately incarcerated people of color, as well as panels describing how education, affluence, drug use and whether or not someone is placed in foster care can influence the likelihood that someone is incarcerated.

According to data from 2017, 28% of people incarcerated between 2000 and 2013 had a history of either an open child welfare case for in-home services or an out-of-home foster care placement. In 2018, 44% of children in the foster care system nationwide were Black or Latinx.

The exhibit also explores the social cost of being incarcerated, not only to the incarcerated themselves, but to their families and communities, primarily shown through video interviews of formerly incarcerated people discussing their experiences and the challenges of reentering society after incarceration.

There are examples of how other countries' criminal justice and incarceration systems function, an opportunity for visitors to come to their own conclusions about which systems are most humane.

“We try to present the exhibit in ways that ask questions. So how did we get here? Does history matter? Who is harmed? Can we do better? We try and present the information in a way that really asks the visitor questions more than we tell them the answers,” said Michele Gee, chief of interpretation and education for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

There’s also a strong interactive component. Polling stations ask visitors questions for their opinions on incarceration and are designed to be used by two people simultaneously. The idea is that after learning more about mass incarceration, the exhibit will become a place for people to have discussions and exchanges of ideas.

Next to the questions are a box of tokens and a place for visitors to cast their own votes on the matter.

For more information on the exhibit, visit the National Park Service website.