A multiyear initiative supporting arts and humanities organizations that engage knowledge and creativity of people impacted by the US criminal legal system.

Imagining Freedom

Photo: Sharif Hamza for Mellon Foundation

Headshot of Elizabeth Alexander

We support artists, scholars, and thinkers—both inside and outside—who are countering the inhumanity of incarceration and the broader criminal legal system.

In 2016, Professor Kelly Lytle Hernández founded Million Dollar Hoods. She now serves as the project’s principal advisor.

A historian stands in an archway and with a direct gaze at the camera.

What Are the Costs of Mass Incarceration in Los Angeles?

That’s what Freedom Reads is: it’s creating another norm that exists in the system that is woefully lacking norms that lead to possibility, and lead to hope.

In his works “A Question of Freedom” and “Felon,” Reginald Dwayne Betts explores the state of incarceration in America.

A Black author and lawyer stands facing the camera, and wearing a black hat.

Felony and Freedom with Reginald Dwayne Betts

I hate that she always reminds me of all she’s done for Love.

You called it cutting apart, I called it a song.

Within these moments of observation, I am not thinking about this place . . . I’m distracted from the truth that another year has passed in this place.

A hand holding a pen reaches toward a piece of paper set among a design with flowers and birds on a black and dark purple background

Freedom, Put in Writing

CC-Rebecca Ginsburg - segment 1 - for audio Clean

Headshot of Rebecca Ginsburg

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.

The programs that we support are focused on thinking about higher education as a kind of human right. 

[Folks who are incarcerated] are real knowledge producers, and they should be viewed that way.

Maria Sachiko Cecire (left), program officer, and Carolyn Dinshaw (right), senior program officer.

Mellon voices HEP program officers photo

Mellon program officer Maria Sachiko Cecire and senior program officer Carolyn Dinshaw
discuss changes to Higher Education in Prison programs due to the recent expansion of Pell Grant eligibility.

What’s the Point of Higher Education in Prison? For One Thing, It’s a Human Right.

A class of 2019 graduate. Photo: courtesy of Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, Babita Patel, 2019. 

A smiling graduate wearing a cap and gown stands in a room before other graduates. The graduate is holding up a diploma and a child.

Higher Learning

Headshot of Phillip Brian Harper

Program Director

Phillip Brian Harper

With its most recent round of funding, Mellon has committed over $60 million to increase higher education opportunities in carceral environments since 2015. 

Mellon Announces Over $5M in Funding for Higher Education in Prisons

Oral Histories Take Us Inside: “And You’re on Rikers Island”

Preview: "And You're On Rikers Island"

How can intellectual and imaginative communities transcend the experience of incarceration?

Event ImaginingFreedom Thumbnail (1) (1)

Originally livestreamed on February 23, 2023. This event included Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander, Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Jesse Krimes.

In Their Own Words: Jailhouse Lawyers on the Challenges and Opportunities They Face

Illustration: Ambrose Reed, courtesy of the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative

Colorful hand-drawn-style illustration of a prison. A bird is delivering a letter over the prison wall.

Read the Letters Written by Jailhouse Lawyers

We are supporting artistic, cultural, and humanistic work that centers the voices and knowledge of people directly affected by the carceral system.

Susan Lee-Chun, “Peace, Love, Harmony,” 2007. Courtesy of the artist. Installation view of “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” On view at MoMA PS1 September 17, 2020 to April 4, 2021. Image courtesy of MoMA PS1. Photo: Kris Graves

Six orange hooded sweatshirts hand in a gallery on display with other artworks

A news announcement about the launch of ”Imagining Freedom,” a funding initiative for work enabling creativity and scholarship of people in prison and those impacted by the criminal justice system.

“Imagining Freedom”: Supporting Creatives & Thinkers Reenvisioning the Criminal Legal System

“Fast Company” on “Imagining Freedom” initiative, featuring interviews with recipients of grants on their work in supporting people who are impacted by the criminal legal justice system.

Media FastCompany

Why the Mellon Foundation is spending $125 million to fight the criminal legal system

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

A side profile of a Black poet wearing glasses and a hat with a small feather hat pin. 

Beyond Incarceration

Reginald Dwayne Betts. Photo: Alexander Saladrigas for Mellon Foundation

A side profile of a Black poet who is wearing glasses and a hat with a feather hat pin.

Artists as Catalysts

Artists as Catalysts Navigation Image

Borderlands Cultures

In portrait orientation, an aerial view of a major highway running parallel to a large border wall set on a hilly landscape

Civic Engagement

A man in a brown jacket stands in front of blue bulletin board that is covered with papers and advertisements  

Evolving Higher Education

A vertical image of an Indigenous person who is sitting on a chair in front of a backdrop.

Expanding Public Knowledge

An interior room filled with audio and video equipment 

Monuments and Memory

A multicolored painted totem pole set in front of a foggy forest landscape

Multivocality

Five people stand together in a group photo. They are laughing and smiling.

Power of the Word

Five colorful neon signs hang on the wall with messages that include, "Freedom cannot wait," "Brown owned," and "America is for Dreamers."

Public Places‚ Public Stories

A group of Indigenous Maskoke people stand and sit in the wooden frame of a structure in a woods

Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora

In a vertical image, a black leather vest is adorned with colorful pins across the front of it. Embroidery on the vest reads: "Felícitas "La Prieta" Méndez" 

What is the liberatory power of the arts and humanities?

$125M

Oral Histories Take Us Inside: “And You’re on Rikers Island”