The Warehouse: A Visual Primer on Mass Incarceration

Mass incarceration is a lived, sensory experience.

The most eye-popping statistics alone cannot relate the enormity of its psychological and societal impacts. This concise, illustrated primer is a collaboration between one of mass incarceration’s sharpest opponents, James Kilgore, and information artist Vic Liu. It brings to life the histories and means of daily survival of the marginalized people ensnared in this racist, ableist system of class-based oppression. The book elegantly weaves together the most insightful activist scholarship with vivid testimonials by incarcerated people as they fight back against oppression and imagine freedom.

Those targeted for incarceration do not simply submit to a monochromatic existence behind bars. The Warehouse showcases the abolition futures being crafted from the inside as people resist through direct action and artistic expression. This book is designed to inform, enrage, and ultimately inspire the same radical hope propelling incarcerated underminers of the carceral state.

James Kilgore is a researcher and activist based in Urbana, Illinois. He is the author of six books, including the National Book Foundation Award-winning A People’s Guide to Mass Incarceration. He drafted four of those volumes during his six and a half years in California prisons. He is a research fellow at MediaJustice, where he founded the Challenging E-Carceration project and is director of advocacy and outreach for FirstFollowers Reentry Program in Champaign, Illinois.

Vic Liu is an artist and author who uses design to communicate complex information with empathy. Most recently, Vic published the expanded version of her visually designed masturbation sex-ed book, Bang! Masturbation for All Genders and Abilities, with Microcosm Publishing.