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Twenty Nine

Brief

ACLU’s 50 State Blueprint aims to reduce the incarceration rate for minor offenses by 50%. Make a website that visualizes the scale of the nearly 2 million people in state prisons. In addition to raising public awareness, the site is a platform where the ACLU could publish extensive state-by-state reports.

Solution

We chose to visualize the immensity of the situation using a simple device: scrolling. We used a simple dot to represent each one of the 1,942,600 people in state prisons, resulting in a website that scrolls past every dot. The ACLU has used this strategy in a broad range of touchpoints for this initiative.

Three mobile screens from the 50 State Blueprint: an Arizona stat card reading '41,964 people in prison', a per-offense reduction breakdown, and the headline '50%' over a Take Action call.
Left side of Georgia's state page on the 50 State Blueprint: 'Georgia has 53,627 people in prison' alongside the pitch 'We can reduce that number.'
Right side of Georgia's state page on the 50 State Blueprint: proposed reforms broken down by offense category (Assault, Robbery, Drug offenses, Burglary, Public order, Weapons), each with projected admissions reductions.
Yellow ACLU semi-truck pulling a multi-colored shipping container printed 'The future we dare to create', parked on a Western road with mountains behind.
Cover for the 50 State Blueprint: a cream-colored dot grid representing every U.S. prisoner, with one tooltip highlighting a Latina woman jailed for drug possession in Colorado.
New York Times article 'Senate Passes Bipartisan Criminal Justice Bill', shown with the lede and opening reporting visible below the photo of the bill's sponsors.

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