OUR RESEARCH MISSION
The Confined Arts Research Team is dedicated to centering the experiences of people impacted by mass incarceration in academic discourse. Situated at the Center for Justice and the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia University, TCA’s Research Team draws on an interdisciplinary network of researchers and students, while also keeping close ties to formerly and currently incarcerated scholars, artists and community members. People who have personal experience with incarceration are involved in every stage of TCA’s research design, implementation and analysis. This dual perspective into both scientific and experiential expertise uniquely positions TCA to conduct rigorous and community-informed research. TCA aims not only to generate knowledge, but to create change by including the voices and perspectives of people who have suffered from an unjust “justice” system.
TCA’s research focuses on the following areas:
Language and Dehumanization
In the summer of 2019, TCA organized and ran the Center for Justice’s Inaugural Justice Conference: The Power of Language to Incarcerate. This event brought together artists, lawyers, social workers, religious leaders, researchers and other professionals to discuss how the labels we use in our day to day life can serve to dehumanize and damage. This conference included TCA original research on how incarcerated people are portrayed and described in popular crime shows, as well TCA original research on how popular labels influence how people dehumanize certain populations, including incarcerated people, homeless people, police officers and more.
The Trauma of Incarceration
In the summer of 2020, TCA hosted a town hall series on Post Traumatic Prison Disorder in partnership with Silent Cry. TCA’s Research Team consolidated relevant public health, neuroscience and psychology research into a presentation to provide a scientific framing to each town hall.
In spring 2020, TCA conducted an in-depth interview study called the Social Dynamics of Prison (SDP) Study, with people who served time in New York State for a felony offense. TCA is working through hours of interview data to produce reports on the psychological impact of incarceration at various stages in the criminal justice system, the social structure of prison life and other topics.
TCA’s research focuses on the following areas:
Language and Dehumanization
In the summer of 2019, TCA organized and ran the Center for Justice’s Inaugural Justice Conference: The Power of Language to Incarcerate. This event brought together artists, lawyers, social workers, religious leaders, researchers and other professionals to discuss how the labels we use in our day to day life can serve to dehumanize and damage. This conference included TCA original research on how incarcerated people are portrayed and described in popular crime shows, as well TCA original research on how popular labels influence how people dehumanize certain populations, including incarcerated people, homeless people, police officers and more.
The Trauma of Incarceration
In the summer of 2020, TCA hosted a town hall series on Post Traumatic Prison Disorder in partnership with Silent Cry. TCA’s Research Team consolidated relevant public health, neuroscience and psychology research into a presentation to provide a scientific framing to each town hall.
In spring 2020, TCA conducted an in-depth interview study called the Social Dynamics of Prison (SDP) Study, with people who served time in New York State for a felony offense. TCA is working through hours of interview data to produce reports on the psychological impact of incarceration at various stages in the criminal justice system, the social structure of prison life and other topics.
OUR methods
The research conducted through The Confined Arts aspires to uphold the following tenets:
- Community- centered: directly useful to impacted individuals and their communities, policy makers, academic institutions, nonprofits and beyond
- Continuous Iteration: evolves to meet the needs of the community and developments in research methodology
- Excellence in Research: rigorous, valid, reliable, statistically significant with the highest ethical standards and professional best practices
- Qualitative and quantitative
- Interdisciplinary: considers context of multiple institutions, disciplines and professions
