Starting around 2003, a small group of prison activists started outreach to collect artwork from people in prisons. The purpose of this project, as stated on the back cover of this book, is to "create a public education tool to expose how the prison industrial complex affects our diverse communities and to challenge current reliance on prisons as a solution to social problems." The original purpose of the project was to create a giant poster that could be used as an educational aid for discussion around the prison issue. This book and DVD is the first manifestation of their research and was put together for a tour that happened shortly after publication.