{"id":16699,"date":"2024-12-02T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T17:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=16699"},"modified":"2026-04-24T15:58:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T19:58:41","slug":"humanization_project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2024\/12\/02\/humanization_project\/","title":{"rendered":"Advocacy Spotlight: The Humanization Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nPeople who go through the criminal legal system often feel as if their humanity is being ignored. These feelings are more than justified. Dehumanization is not simply a side effect of incarceration: it is intentional and has been a part of prisons in the United States since the first brick was laid. Prisons in early America were so focused on keeping prisoners isolated and anonymous that they “required inmates to wear hoods<\/a> whenever overseers moved them around the penitentiary.” While some things have changed, stripping prisoners’ identities remains a main component of incarceration in America. \n<\/p>\n

\nAccording to activists like Johnny Perez,<\/a> “The thing that they take the most, also, is actually your identity.” As the authors of The Roles of Dehumanization and Moral Outrage in Retributive Justice<\/i><\/a> point out, “viewing others as lacking core human capacities and likening them to animals or objects may make them seem less sensitive to pain, more dangerous and uncontrollable, and thus more needful of severe and coercive forms of punishment.” Reducing incarcerated people to numbers or to the alleged acts that brought them to prison makes it easier to deny them civil rights<\/a> and allows systems to justify harsher punishment, longer sentences<\/a>, as well as the inhumane, often abusive conditions<\/a> that prisons impose by design<\/a>. Dehumanization allows policymakers to ignore the human impact of their decisions on people in prisons and their families. It also creates the false image that people in prison are incapable of rehabilitation.\n<\/p>\n

\"Virginia\"\n<\/picture>Virginia research<\/span>See all our research on Virginia prisons and jails.<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

\nWhen lawmakers don’t see people in prisons as fully human, it makes it much harder to change inhumane prison conditions and policies. That’s why an organization of systems-impacted advocates in Virginia, The Humanization Project<\/a>, uses a framework of “humanization” <\/i>to drive policy change. Humanization works to unflatten the identities of those impacted by incarceration in public narrative and political discussions, shifting focus away from people’s worst moments and toward the many statuses and roles that make them who they are. Through humanization, people are not just numbers or statistics; they are fully formed human beings with families who love them. They are children and parents, husbands and wives, grandmothers and grandfathers. This change in perspective can have a powerful impact on lawmakers.\n<\/p>\n

The Humanization Project provides a powerful framework for advocacy
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\nThe Humanization Project <\/a>has been working with the impacted community to reform Virginia’s justice system since 2017. Co-founded by Executive Director Taj Mahon-Haft and his partner Gin Carter while Mahon-Haft was still incarcerated, the organization began by noting that the “human consequence” of policy decisions was often left out of reform discussions. Informed by Mahon-Haft’s experience as a trained sociologist, The Humanization Project used a humanization framework, centered in empathy and common ground, to develop several strategies to change this dynamic, including:\n<\/p>\n