Welcome to the Freedom & Captivity Portal on Maine Memory Network, a digital archive of carceral experience that showcases the hidden stories of Maine’s incarcerated community members and others impacted by Maine’s criminal legal system. This is the first digital space in Maine to hold stories about incarceration, curated and sensitively contextualized by those most impacted by incarceration.
We welcome stories and artifacts from Mainers who have been impacted by the criminal legal system because they served time in prison or jail, had an incarcerated family member, or were involved in the criminal legal system as someone who either caused harm or experienced harm. We also welcome stories from those who have worked in carceral settings.
Maine is an important location for this collection. While incarceration rates in Maine are not as high as those in many other states, Maine is unique for having no Public Defender office and some of the harshest sentencing practices in the country. As discussed in the article “The Case for Second Chances” (Maine Law Review, 76:1), the 1976 revision of the criminal code eliminated parole, expanded the number of actions that could result in incarceration, and lengthened most sentences, resulting in a 649% increase in the number of people in jail and a 151% increase in the number of people in prison by 2017. The number of women in Maine’s prisons grew fifteenfold following the reform, and the Black to White racial disparity in Maine’s prison population expanded to 9:1; one of the worst in the country. Additionally, according to the Maine ACLU, as of 2019 an estimated 40,000 people were cycling through Maine’s jails every year. The majority of people held in Maine’s prisons and jails have experienced major life traumas and struggle with substance use disorder, mental health challenges, poverty, and low educational levels.
Thoughts of FreedomA story by Raymond from 2021
As people experiencing incarceration are removed from society, their life stories, experiences, and pathways of growth and transformation become almost completely inaccessible to those on the outside, ensuring they remain defined in the public eye as little more than the crime for which they were convicted. Furthermore, the heavy impact of incarceration on families and communities remains private and invisible to the public. Importantly, the impact of the criminal legal system on survivors of harm is also underacknowledged because of the presumption that incarceration offers them justice and healing. As noted by Danielle Sered in her 2021 book Until we Reckon, and by the national survey of crime survivors conducted by the Alliance for Safety and Justice, survivors of harm are questioning whether incarceration truly affords the results of public safety, accountability, justice, healing, and repair in the wake of harm.
Freedom & Captivity addresses these questions by: 1) envisioning alternatives to incarceration in the wake of harm that actually center the needs of survivors for healing; 2) creating bridges between people on the inside and people on the outside, in order to build community connections; and 3) changing the narrative about incarceration by giving those who are justice-impacted public platforms to share their experiences and life journeys.