The original purpose of this Prison Aesthetics and Policy class project was to develop an archive of letters written by prisoners and photographs taken by institutions to establish a written and visual record of experiences in prison. we believe this archive is important  for multiple reasons: 

1. We believe that the lived experiences of prisoners deserve to be preserved to document the diversity of human experiences in the contemporary world. Creating an archive of letters and photographs that portray life in prison allows for a deeper, more humanistic perspective on an experience that is relatively unknown to people in the outside world. 
2. The archive serves a representational purpose to capture the experiences of marginalized communities and establish them as important pieces of history that must be preserved to counter the one-sided negative effects of erasure, absence, and misrepresentation in mainstream media and archives. As much as possible, we aim to work with the individuals sharing their personal materials to learn about their histories and connect to their pasts with the goal of countering the isolation and lack of autonomy that characterizes the experience of life in prison.
3. Through showing the experiences of life in prison, we aim to encourage  deeper reflection on and and reconsideration  of current prison conditions and policies, with an emphasis on the potential for reform (*and/or abolition?), while preserving these valuable historical documents. The product of this project may be kept in archival repositories such as UIC Libraries or another publicly accessible space for future educational use and analysis.
4. The lived experiences of people in prison  are being lost due to the death of formerly incarcerated people and their families, a lack of organization in institutional records, and shifts towards digital technology,such as email, which phase out letters and photos as meaningful physical and emotional objects. We want these materials  to be preserved not only  for the purposes of this class project, but also for individuals the families involved.  

Our plan for documenting and creating this archive is to initially count and assess the amount  and types of content (defined as photos and letters to/from any prisoners that respond to our team outreach of the predetermined institutions provide us upon request) provided to us. Then organize the content thematically and using identifiable characteristics that may include date, location, and non-identifiable prisoner characteristics (that are to be determined ( e.g. length of sentence, time spent in prison, amount of correspondences we collected to/from this person etc..)). This information will be stored in two places: one will be a physical location to be determined the second will be a digital space easily accessible to the public (e.g. this website or collection of databases like EBSCO (insert options here).