The Freedom & Captivity digital collection in the Maine Memory Network, and the complete digital archive housed at Colby Special Collections, is a repository of personal testimonies, ephemera, memorabilia, artifacts, and visual materials that capture multiple dimensions of the experiences of incarceration for individuals, families, and communities, as well as for survivors of harm. Those who have experienced incarceration are invited to share their stories in the form of autobiographical written or audio narratives, vignettes of meaningful moments, photographs of material memorabilia from their time inside, photographs taken during family visits, original artwork that captures a meaningful dimension of their experience inside and more.
For SaleA Story by ALD
The goal of the Freedom & Captivity digital presentation on Maine Memory Network is to share forms of connection and experience that artifacts and personal narratives about incarceration reveal in order to offer a trove of testimonial and material evidence built by Mainers impacted by the criminal legal system. The collection is useful to researchers, teachers, legislators, advocates, activists, journalists, writers, and, of course, those who are themselves justice-impacted. In short, the collection tells comprehensive and nuanced stories about how people experience and survive incarceration, the costs of incarceration, and the human and social toll of using prisons to manage social problems and to respond to harm.
