Zora Murff
Featured photographer

Corrections

From 2012 to 2015, Zora Murff worked as a Tracker for Linn County Juvenile Detention and Diversion Services in Cedar Rapids, Iowa providing services to youths who were convicted of crimes ordered to complete probation. Tracking and other community-based services are being increasingly used as an alternative to incarceration. These services allow juveniles to stay in their homes and show a higher rate of success than incarceration. The system has been put in place to provide rehabilitation, but it is far from a straightforward process. Many influences outside of the youths’ control play a role in whether or not a youth reoffends.

By reconsidering the role that he played in the lives of these kids, Zora Murff began to acknowledge the burden that comes with tasking young men and women with continued complicity. Zora Murff’s stance as a consequence kept our relationships in flux – a constant motion mirroring the discord that develops between the system’s intentions and outcomes. Through employing ideas of anonymity, voyeurism, and introspection, Corrections is an examination of youth experience in the system, the role images play in defining someone who is deemed a criminal, and how the concepts of privacy and control may affect their future.

© All photos courtesy of Zora Murff