Conversations about incarcerated people often focus on statistics, how people in prison are treated and the many deficits they face. But poet Dasha Kelly Hamilton says these conversations often miss an essential part of the story: the humanity of those impacted.
Kelly Hamilton is the co-host of a podcast from Wisconsin Humanities, called Humanity Unlocked. For her and co-producer Jen Rubin, this project is an opportunity to reimagine the incarceration system, changing the perspectives that often surrounds it by focusing on the humanities.
"The humanities are everything that's in between the bricks: how you think, how you feel, how you understand the world," says Kelly Hamilton. "So, it's philosophy. It's art. It's literature. It's all of the things that we've been told that don't translate into skills. But we are way more than our job applications. So, the humanities are everything that make you a person."