They have also captured for posterity the desolate interiors that once made up the city's civic infrastructure: courthouses, churches, schools, dentists, police stations, jails, public libraries and swimming pools, all of which have most of their original fixtures and fittings intact.
In early March, while Jackson was still jailing public officials, Governor Claiborne had written to Washington in alarm.
It's the same story with other community services that might keep people out of jail: public health was devolved to cash-starved local authorities and then George Osborne cut the allocation.
Only now, instead of slave quarters and the backs of buses, they inhabit jails and public housing projects.
They complained to the Department of Public Charities and Correction, which administered the city's almshouse, workhouse, insane asylums, orphanages, jails and public hospitals.
Among the report's other findings were that BAME males are almost five times more likely to be housed in high-security jails for public order offences than white men.
"Our lawsuit is relying on very clear state law, three different statutes, requiring that jails make public the names and other information on all those being held," said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the A.C.L.U. of New Jersey.
In the decade before 2011, when the FBI's investigation into alleged abuses in the jails became public, the district attorney's office filed only two cases involving inmate beatings.
Once seen as Baca's heir apparent, Tanaka never recovered from the hit his standing suffered in 2011, when news of an FBI investigation into widespread problems in the county jails became public.
If they were ordered held in the jail, the public defenders went to the jail later to see them.
As part of its review, the city's Investigation Department, officials said, will interview jail personnel and examine surveillance video recorded in the jail's public areas.
