Prisons and Pollution: A Nationwide Analysis of Carceral Environmental Inequality

Abstract

The disproportionate exposure of incarcerated populations to environmental harms is an emerging area of interest among scholars and activists. Existing research has illuminated these intersecting systems of inequality with broad theorization and case study examples of prisons and jails located near environmental hazards. However, there are few nationwide assessments of carceral environmental inequality—studies examining whether prison communities in the United States are disproportionately located near environmental harms. Our paper examines the influence of prison proximity on four measures of environmental harm to test whether carceral environmental inequality exists in the United States at the census tract level. Multi-level regression models—which account for the nested nature of census tracts within both counties and states—find that (1) closer proximity to a prison is associated with higher levels of pollution across all measures of environmental harm, and (2) that trend is mostly driven by proximity to county jails rather than state or federal prisons. We suggest that these trends may be driven by complex prison and pollution siting patterns. Our paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for future research on carceral environmental inequality.