Having covered environmental injustice and prisons in the US, in this blog post I analyze how they relate to one another. When people think about environmental issues, they usually bring up topics related to air and water pollution. We are advised to bike more often, take shorter showers, and to "reuse, reduce, and recycle" to fix environmental issues. However, that diminishes environmental issues to the bare minimum and overlooks the intersectionalities between injustice and environmentalism. Environmental issues, as I covered previously, encompass a complex array of issues embedded in racism and capitalism.
In this website, I focus on how the location and structure of prisons allow environmental injustices to thrive. Fortunately, prisons are increasingly being exposed as locations of environmental injustice for subjecting incarcerated people to toxic air and water, and for polluting the ecosystems around them (1). Many prisons, immigrant detention prisons, juvenile detention centers, and jails actually stand on or are close to former hazardous waste sites. These prisons are beset with inhumane environmental conditions that force inmates to breathe air full of mold, consume contaminated water, and endure dangerous and underpaid labor conditions (1). Ultimately, these enclosed spaces are breeding grounds for environmental injustices because they deprive incarcerated populations of clean air and drinking water, while simultaneously making it impossible for them to leave because their liberty is revoked.
Incarcerated populations do not have the ability to avoid these injustices and are forced to endure dehumanizing living conditions that endanger their health and lives.
Prior Exposure to Environmental Injustice
As discussed earlier, environmental injustice is a product of state-sanctioned institutionalized racism and violence that disproportionately exposes low-income communities of color to sources of polluted air and water. Similarly, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that in 2014 the median annual income for people prior to their incarceration was $19,185, a number that is 41% less than in people that have never been incarcerated. This insinuates that they most likely resided in poor communities prior to incarceration and as this recent study found, people living in poverty have 1.35 higher exposure to particulate matter than the overall population. Particulate matter is a mixture of solid particles that form in the atmosphere as a result of the harmful chemicals emitted from power plants, cars, and industries. Such particles are detrimental to people's health because they can be small enough to enter people's lungs and bloodstream, causing health issues like asthma and premature death in people with heart or lung disease.
Another similarity that can point to the possibility of incarcerated people being exposed to environmental justice prior to being incarcerated is race. It is widely known that Black people are disproportionately incarcerated as research shows that Black people are incarcerated five times more than white people. Similarly, this report indicates that more than 68 percent of Black people live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant. Also, this other report found that communities of color are twice as likely than white communities to live near dangerous chemical facilities.
What all of this entails is that there's a possibility that incarcerated people, especially those from low-income communities of color, are victims of environmental injustices before they are incarcerated. According to David Pellow, individuals from low-income communities can suffer the consequences of environmental racism as criminalization from birth to death. Meaning that they can be born into toxic communities with strong police presence, attend schools full of pollutants and more police force, work in harmful and underpaid jobs, and ultimately face incarceration- another toxic setting but with full surveillance. Unfortunately, that is the inescapable reality for many incarcerated people. A revolving door of toxicity, poverty, racism, and criminalization that does not necessarily begin with incarceration but at birth.
Conclusion
While correlation does not mean causation, the similarities between environmental injustice and prisons point to an issue that must be researched. Do most incarcerated people experience environmental issues prior to being incarcerated? If so, how does that affect their health? Does it contribute in any way to their pre-existing poverty before incarceration? However, what is apparent is that poverty and race play important roles in perpetuating environmental injustice and prisons in the US.
Pellow, David & Vazin, Jasmine & Austin, Michaela & Johnson, Ketia. (2019). Capitalism in Practice: Free Market Influence on Environmental Injustice in America's Prisons. 10.13140/RG.2.2.24967.75682.
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