Mississippi Floods and Incarceration
This project studies how the great Mississippi River floods of 1922 and 1927 affected incarceration in the states bordering the river. The floods displaced hundreds of thousands of people, disrupted labor markets, and in some places were followed by coercive labor and policing regimes; we ask whether and how this shows up in prison and jail populations. Students will build the project's primary outcome data by transcribing historical prison and jail records and by scraping digitized state and county sources into machine-readable form. The role includes constructing and testing scrapers, transcribing tabular records accurately, cleaning and validating the resulting data, and documenting sources so results can be replicated. Students meet regularly with the project director to review progress and troubleshoot.
Essay prompt: In a few paragraphs, tell us why this project interests you and describe any relevant experience with data collection, web scraping, or historical documents. Tell us honestly what you already know and what you would want to learn.
Incarceration research is often limited by the absence of good historical data; on this project you help create it. Students get practical training in web scraping and data pipeline work alongside archival transcription — an unusual combination that is directly useful for empirical social science, data analysis roles, and graduate study. The work connects to an ongoing book project on the origins of mass incarceration, and strong contributors may extend the work into an honors thesis and will be acknowledged in resulting publications.