Unlocked: Art and Experiences From Inside Virginia's Prisons, Volume 2.1

With this biannual online project, we seek to amplify the voices of the incarcerated in our state through their poems, spoken word, personal reflections, and artwork. In doing so, we not only lift the concerns and creativity of those behind bars, but we also provide a healing space where imagination and talent serve to restore and empower. Art humanizes, engages, makes us think, and creates connections. It has always been a powerful agent for change if we just unlock it.

This second issue of our burgeoning publication broadens the spectrum of colors with which we paint our lives, wishes, and recollections, taking readers further into truly understanding the lived human experience of mass incarceration. In doing so, it digs deeper and further into the escape tunnel that is a voice expressed and heard.