The old Essex County Jail, the oldest government building in Newark, reflects Newark’s history: from its beginnings as a small town to its rise as an industrial metropolis and its economic decline after the 1967 Rebellion. The building that was the jail has sat abandoned for over forty years. This exhibition of the past and present life of the old Essex County Jail proposes various methods of transforming this place of historic confinement into a future site of memory and growth.
Why should we preserve and remember a jail? The United States now holds more prisoners than any other nation. These individuals are disproportionately people of color, and many face great challenges escaping the pipeline that lands, and returns, them there. Prison reform, particularly important to Newark, must take into account the documented past as a reminder to future generations of the danger of repeating prison history.