ACTIONS: Visiting Our Neighbors in Jail

America incarcerates more people than any other country, and our prison-industrial complex keeps growing as the children of that system feed back into it. Most readers of this magazine probably have little contact with this system, or at least we don't realize that we do. But several years ago a local car accident involving teenagers inspired photographer Susan Madden Lankford to step out of her affluent enclave and into her local jail system with her camera and tape recorder. She went to hearings, arraignments, and various kinds of jails. She spoke to everyone from sheriffs to guards to psychologists, but her focus was the women prisoners. She realized that these were people she'd seen in church or at the beauty shop. Her investigation has resulted in a book of photos and interviews called Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time (Humane Exposures Publishing, 2008). It features 326 stark black-and-white photographs of the inmates, along with thoughts on what we can do to break the cycle of incarceration. This September there will be a series of book-related events on the West coast. To learn more, go to HumaneExposures.com.