Lydia Crumbley - JustSeeds Portfolio Project

Public Secrets is an interactive website with sound clips and textual narratives from female inmates in California State Prisons. It addresses the problem of secrecy among the growing number of prisons. Daniel narrates the opening sequence. The site goes into the personal accounts of the women in the facility and it exposes ideas of “the existence of the Prison Industrial Complex, its pervasive network of monopolies, its human rights abuses.” Daniel suggests that “the growth of the prison industrial complex and the unimpeded violation of human rights within it are irrefutable testimony to the power of the public secret.”

Narrators express, first hand, the abuses they have experienced. Many of these stories have been kept under wraps because of an imposed media ban on all facilities within the California Department of Corrections. One account includes a woman who was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the same crime committed by a male, by the same judge, who received a lesser sentence. This hypertext site is an example of the growing bridge that links the new world of the digital media with the world of grassroots organizing. The site also highlights the plights of women in prison which is often overlooked. Attention must be paid.