Mellon voices
What’s the Point of Higher Education in Prison? For One Thing, It’s a Human Right.
Beyond Incarceration
What is the liberatory power of the arts and humanities?
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet and founder of the organization Freedom Reads, which brings book collections to people in prison. Photo: Alexander Saladrigas for Mellon Foundation
Millions of people in the US face incarceration and criminalization, impacting their relatives, communities, and future generations, and depriving society of their expression, creativity, knowledge, and perspectives. Arts, culture, and humanities work that centers the voices and expertise of people directly affected by the American criminal legal system can uniquely deepen our shared understanding of the system, catalyze us to address the damage it causes, and move us toward justice.
Voice
What It’s Like to Workshop a Play in Prison: Building a SuperNova
Read the essay 
Elizabeth Hawes
2025 Writing
Freedom Fellow
University of Central Florida
How Writers in a Florida Prison Use Volunteer Voice Actors to Make a Podcast from Notepads and Pencils
Elizabeth Alexander
President
“We support artists, scholars, and thinkers—both inside and outside—who are countering the inhumanity of incarceration and the broader criminal legal system.”
$125M
Imagining Freedom
A multiyear initiative supporting arts and humanities organizations that engage knowledge and creativity of people impacted by the US criminal legal system.
University of California at Los Angeles
What Are the Costs of Mass Incarceration in Los Angeles?
Yale University
Felony and Freedom with Reginald Dwayne Betts
The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, Inc.
Freedom, Put in Writing
Rebecca Ginsburg
Director, Education Justice Project
at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
“People in prison and those who have been incarcerated are people—deep, complex, and full of promise if given the right opportunities at the right time.”
Rikers Public Memory Project
Oral Histories Take Us Inside: “And You’re on Rikers Island”
Past event
Imagining Freedom
New York University
Read the Letters Written by Jailhouse Lawyers
See grants that are related to Beyond Incarceration
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