This dataset documents the records of mainly Black people incarcerated in the Tennessee State Penitentiary in the period directly before, during, and after the Civil War, from 1850-1870. It includes a staggering amount of formerly enslaved Civil War soldiers and veterans who had enlisted in the segregated regiments of the United States Military, the U.S.C.T. This demographic information of over 1,400 inmates incarcerated in an occupied border state allows us to examine trends, patterns, and relationships that speak to the historic ties between the US military and the TN State Penitentiary, and more broadly, the role of enslavement’s legacies in the development of punitive federal systems. Further analysis of this dataset reveals the genesis of many modern trends in incarceration and law. The dataset of this article and its historiographical implications will be of interest to scholars who study the regional dynamics of antebellum and post-Civil War prison systems, convict leasing and the development of the modern carceral state, Black resistance in the forms of fugitivity and participation in the Civil War, and pre-war era incarceration of free Black men and women and non-Black people convicted of crimes related to enslavement.

Absolute changes in life expectancy at age 20 among people in prisons, by race & sex across periods, 2000–2014.

This survey was sponsored by USA Today and CNN, and conducted by The Gallup Organization. A national sample of 1,244 adults plus an oversample of 235 blacks were interviewed October 13-18, 1993. Major topics covered: Bill Clinton job performance; prison sentences; violent crimes; guns.

Please Note: This dataset is part of the historical CISER Data Archive Collection and is also available at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at https://doi.org/10.25940/ROPER-31088209. We highly recommend using the Roper Center version as they may make this dataset available in multiple data formats in the future.