Are sustainable prisons possible?

In Spring 2023, students in WWU’s ENVS 499D: Readings in Environmental Justice are learning about the intersections between environmental justice and incarceration. This post reflects some of the group’s learning and discussion.

By Charlotte Meenach, Sydney Vasquez, Cassidy Packard, and Sophia Reynolds

In a piece for the Prison Policy Initiative, titled “Prisons are a daily environmental injustice,” author Leah Wang reflects on the health hazards and dangerous environmental conditions that incarcerated people are exposed to at higher rates than most other communities. The article emphasizes the many environmental injustices that people face in prisons and jails, providing several examples occurring within the United States such as facilities being located on or near hazardous sites, inmates being exposed to hazardous substances, and prisons failing to evacuate during environmental disasters (Wang, 2022). The correlation between incarceration and environmental injustice is stark, and at the same time unsurprising. In our society, average people are rarely concerned with the treatment or health of those in prisons. This “out of sight, out of mind” view of incarcerated people has very harmful implications for their mental and physical health, requiring urgent changes at a national level.

Among all the cruel examples of environmental injustices that inmates face in prisons and jails, it must be noted that there is a common theme: carceral facilities are developed on undesirable and uninhabitable land. Perhaps it is socially justified to locate prisons and jails on hazardous land because society assumes that incarcerated people are horrible criminals and should be punished. This kind of punishment towards “outsiders” from the normative society may stem from the violent, discriminatory patterns of American settler colonialism, in which the more habitable land was dominated by white settlers while Indigenous people were forced to live on less habitable land. With this narrative in mind, it is clear that relocating prisons and jails is likely impossible as it would lack enough political support to actually be implemented. Therefore, more practical solutions should be explored.

Relating this topic to natural hazards, there are several risks associated with prisons that have not been studied enough. Many inmates are not equipped with the necessary knowledge, precautions and preparedness for natural hazards that the rest of society might have, and may not even be allowed to evacuate in a disaster. Most incarcerated people do not have a home that they need to worry about flood-proofing, or securing parapets and other items in their home in case of an earthquake. In many ways, their fate is in the hands of a poorly constructed building and the decisions of prison management.

This is obviously a wicked problem with several different components built in. Where do we place prisoners/inmates in the face of a disaster? Are buildings built to withstand hazards? Is there an evacuation route set in stone for each facility? These are all issues that we need to look into. With the lack of education provided to inmates and the limitations placed on their own decision-making, there is often not much they can do to save themselves during a disaster. This plays into the idea of morality and how humans view others in our own species. Many see inmates as lowlifes that should not be properly cared for. They are forced to live in inhumane conditions in buildings filled with asbestos, black mold, and other toxic or hazardous bacteria. If we were to create a better system that would equip prisoners with basic safety measures like evacuation routes and better housing, a solution would be possible.

Another environmental injustice related to natural hazards that incarcerated people face is the use of inmate labor to respond to disasters. This practice is becoming more widespread in the U.S. as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of hazard events, and as our incarcerated population continues to grow. Due in part to the country’s massive number of inmates, and the legality of forcing them to work for very little pay under the 13th Amendment, many state and local governments have jumped at the opportunity to exploit incarcerated people for cheap disaster labor. One of these states is California, which has been using inmate firefighters to combat the devastating wildfires that break out in the state each year. However, almost every state in the U.S. allows the use of inmate labor forces in disaster response, including Washington (Purdum & Meyer, 2020). This again reflects the dominant perception of incarcerated people as less than human, or as expendable sources of labor whose safety is not a priority because they have committed a crime– completely ignoring the larger structural injustices in the U.S. legal system. As a society, we need to change this narrative in order to reduce the exposure of inmates to hazardous conditions, and its physical and mental health consequences.

The question becomes: what kind of solutions are out there? Sustainability in Prisons Project is a project in Washington state that seeks to teach incarcerated people sustainability practices. Not only do inmates get paid, but they also receive a certificate for their education so that after prison, they are able to carry on with these sustainable practices. Another benefit of this project is that it gives inmates more access to the outdoors. Enrichment activities can help with mental health and behavior; getting outside and doing something meaningful would benefit people both inside and outside the prison.

Although this program is a good way to incorporate environmental education into prisons, it doesn’t address the problem of environmental hazards that inmates are sentenced to. A solution would be to relocate the prisons to non-toxic sites, however this is unlikely to happen. An alternative solution is to have emergency evacuation plans for all prisons, tailored to the location of the institution. Another solution that Wang brings up in her article is that if we get people out of prison faster, there will be less people inside to be threatened in the first place.

Works Cited

Brown, A. (2022, February 12). Deteriorating Prisons Are Making Flood Risks Worse. The

Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2022/02/12/prison-climate-crisis-flood/

Purdum, J. C. & Meyer, M. A. (2020). Prisoner Labor Throughout the Life Cycle of Disasters.

Risks, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 11(3). Policy Studies Organization. DOI: 10.1002/rhc3.12191.

Sustainability in Prisons Project. (n.d.). Evergreen State College & Washington State Department of Corrections. Retrieved April 26, 2023, from http://sustainabilityinprisons.org/

Wang, L. (2022, April 20). Prisons are a daily environmental injustice. Prison Policy Initiative.

Prisons are a daily environmental injustice