Arrest records offer a remarkable portrait of criminal justice (and injustice) in the present and the past. On their face, these records would seem to capture only a single interaction between an officer of the law and one or more city residents -- between police and policed. When viewed in the aggregate, however, these moments present researchers with a wealth of legal, criminological, demographic, and geographic information. For the most part, the process of finding and transcribing these records has made them them inaccessible to all but the most devoted of researchers. Arresting Inequality collects arrest records from early 20th century New Orleans, offering visitors an opportunity to engage with these remarkable documents in a fully searchable, sortable, and (eventually) mappable format. Responding to popular interest in race, policing, and mass incarceration, this site aims to put these records in the hands of students of history, both within and beyond the academy.
eHistory was founded at the University of Georgia in 2011 by historians Claudio Saunt and Stephen Berry