03_Geonarratives for Mitigation

SPRING / 2023
For Conflict Urbanism, Laura Kurgan
With Yuna Li, John Max Grunewald, Caroline Wineburg & The Legal Aid Society

Read full project here →           
    Featured in the New York Times

*NOTE THAT THIS WORK HAD TO BE ALTERED TO CENSOR/ANONYMIZE CLIENT’S INFORMATION

         Our team collaborated with The Legal Aid Society for the past four months, joining and supporting their efforts to highlight the systematic barriers faced by low-income individuals and communities of color within the New York criminal justice system, and advocating for their client’s sentence mitigation through videos and personal interviews. We contributed to their efforts by creating visual data narratives to supplement their video mitigation projects which aim for a range of outcomes including clemency, lessened sentences, or full release for clients facing excessive punishment.

            We created animated maps and illustrations that visualized the inequities faced by the clients, all of whom are members of marginalized communities in New York City. Through applied geo-narratives (i.e. mapmaking) as a method for storytelling through “social geography”, we assisted the Legal Aid Society in visualizing how trauma, community, environment, and social factors “are linked to larger social forces that help or hinder their decision-making”.

        Through this work, we also aim to examine how mass incarceration unfairly impacts marginalized communities and how these are processes grounded in geospatial realities.

CASE II


CASE I