I was so shaken by my conclusion that mass incarceration is mass elimination.

It is yes, a project extracting profit from our bodies.

It is also a technique and a tactic of banishing unwanted communities.

That shook me to my core and it required that I, in a deep way, change how I work and

become mostly directly accountable to the community-based organizations who are doing the work

to end the age of mass incarceration.

From Futuro Media, it's Latino USA, I'm Maria Inohosa.

Today, a conversation with Kelly Lightall Hernandez, whose work documenting mass incarceration

can help us to imagine a future beyond it.

Kelly Lightall Hernandez is a leading scholar on race, immigration, and mass incarceration.

Last year she was named a MacArthur Foundation Genius Awardee for her project Million Dollar

Hoods, which maps and documents the fiscal and human costs of mass incarceration in the

city of Los Angeles.

Based at UCLA, the research at Million Dollar Hoods shows that the Los Angeles government

is spending millions of dollars to incarcerate people in predominantly black and brown

neighborhoods.

With renewed calls to defund the police, Kelly argues the money used for incarceration

might be better spent elsewhere.

And then her team takes it one step further and uses the LAPD's own data to create what

they call equations for liberation.

Kelly, I want to welcome you to Latino USA and really just say thank you for all of the

work that you do.

...