The Million Dollar Blocks project will display maps, diagrams, charts and images of prison populations in various US cities which dramatically demonstrate the phenomenon of Million Dollar Blocks, urban census blocks where so many residents are in prison that it costs at least $1 million to incarcerate them.

The maps developed use advanced GIS software, in a collaborative research program on “Graphical Innovation in Justice Mapping,” the inaugural project in the Spatial Information Design Lab of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia.

The project aims to create an environment in which a public exhibition of compelling graphical material can stimulate a wide public and media discussion, and the material and the debate can in turn inform an intensive and action-oriented policy process among experts and stakeholders.

By Laura Kurgan design. PDF of the project.
Thanks Konomi.