Struggles for Environmental Justice in US Prisons and Jails

Pellow, David N.

doi:10.1111/anti.12569

Cited by 60 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Abolition did not end the day chattel slavery ceased in the US, nor have calls for relations of repair (sometimes glossed as reparations) ceased. Likewise, the violence of environmental racism does not stop with each individual site fight that stops the building of a prison that will harm people and the land (Pellow 2019; Ybarra 2020). The violence of settler colonialism, which privileges the lives and livelihoods of non‐Indigenous peoples at the expense of Indigenous self‐determination, likewise points to the urgent need for decolonisation.…”

Section: Abolition Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In “Struggles for environmental justice in US prisons and jails”, David Pellow (2019) argues environmental injustice should be seen as a form of criminalisation. Because environmental injustice is so often a product of state‐sanctioned violence against communities of colour, Pellow explores how reframing EJ as a practice of treating those populations as criminally suspect and as deserving of state punishment.…”

Section: Papers In This Symposiummentioning

confidence: 99%

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On Abolition Ecologies and Making “Freedom as a Place”

2020

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This introduction calls for political ecology to systematically engage with the ways that white supremacy shapes human relationships with land through entangled processes of settler colonialism, empire and racial capitalism. To develop the analytic of abolition ecology, we begin with the articulation of W.E.B. Du Bois' abolition democracy together with Ruth Wilson Gilmore's spatially attuned analytic of abolition geography. Rather than define communities by the violence they suffer, abolition ecologies call for attention to radical place-making and the land, air and water based environments within which places are made. To that end, we suggest that an abolition ecology demands attention to the ways that coalitional land-based politics dismantle oppressive institutions and to the promise of abolition, which Gilmore describes as making "freedom as a place". Resumen: Esta introducci on hace una llamada a la ecolog ıa-pol ıtica para que critique sistem aticamente las formas en que la supremac ıa blanca orienta a las relaciones entre lose seres humanos y la tierra a trav es de los procesos de colonialismo, imperialismo y capitalismo racial. Para desarrollar el concepto de la ecolog ıa abolicionista, comenzamos articulando la propuesta de democracia de la abolici on de W.E.B. Du Bois de con el concepto de Ruth Wilson Gilmore de la geograf ıa de abolici on con su anal ıtica atinado a lo espacial. En vez de definir a comunidades por la violencia que sufren, la ecolog ıa abolicionista requiere atenci on a hacer-lugares radicales y sobre los entornos basados en tierra, aire, y agua en que se hacen los lugares. Con ese fin, sugerimos que una ecolog ıa abolicionista exige an alisis de las formas en que una pol ıtica coalicional basada en la tierra desmantela las instituciones opresivas y la promesa de la abolici on, que Gilmore relata como hacer "la libertad como un lugar".

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Section: Abolition Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Papers In This Symposiummentioning

confidence: 99%

On Abolition Ecologies and Making “Freedom as a Place”

2020

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“…Furthermore, from 2011 through 2013, 11 of 17 incarcerated adults who died had developed cancer (Bernd et al, 2017). Richard Mosley filed a related lawsuit against the prison where he was formerly incarcerated and an active Fayette Justice Health Committee healthcare campaign member (Pellow, 2019).…”

Section: Climate Disasters Hyperincarceration and Crisis Response Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Decarbonization and decarceration interests have converged in challenging new or existing prison facilities and related adverse environmental impacts in various areas, including Kentucky, California, and Pennsylvania (Bernd et al, 2017;Eason, 2017;Story & Prins, 2019). For instance, the Prison Ecology Project, founded in 2015, began to unite concerns regarding criminal justice reform with those related to environmental sustainability and justice (Pellow, 2019).…”

Section: The Political Economy Of Climate Injustice and Hyperincarcermentioning

confidence: 99%

Carceral and Climate Crises and Health Inequities: A Call for Greater Transparency, Accountability, and Human Rights Protections

Golembeski¹,

Dong²,

Irfan³

2021

World Med & Health Policy

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The United States has approximately 5 percent of the world's population but incarcerates nearly 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population and produces nearly 25 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Climate change and hyperincarceration are causes and consequences of structural racism and economic deprivation, which disproportionately affect structurally disenfranchised citizens, including lower-income communities, communities of color, and people with disabilities. Empirical evidence exists regarding the adverse health effects of climate change and mass incarceration, which occur in cascading and overlapping categories and include preventable death, illness, and injury. Researchers underscore the medical vulnerability of incarcerated populations, who are increasingly susceptible to climate-driven exposure pathways and mental and physical health outcomes involving extreme temperatures, natural disasters, infectious diseases, and displacement. Intersectional structural drivers, such as anthropogenic climate change and hyperincarceration, undermine social and political determinants of health equity. Policymakers and health professionals can advance understanding and mitigate present and anticipated public health threats by increasing transparency, accountability, and human rights protections with an emphasis on decarceration and decarbonization.

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“…While the political, economic, and social implications of the PIC have been explored extensively (see Davis 2003;Davis and Barsamian 1999;Schlosser 1998), little attention has been given to the environmental consequences of the PIC. Pellow (2018Pellow ( , 2019 has demonstrated that prisons are loci for environmental injustice, exacerbating preexisting forms of social inequality such that prisoners are disproportionately exposed to environmental harm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locked into Emissions: How Mass Incarceration Contributes to Climate Change

2020

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The phenomenon of mass incarceration has dramatically altered the economic and infrastructural landscape of the United States. These changes have numerous implications regarding the use of fossil fuels, which are the single largest contributor to climate change. The present study argues that mass incarceration creates three social patterns that result in significant increases in industrial emissions. (1) Mass incarceration incentivizes further industrial development through the construction of new prisons and the continued maintenance of existing prisons to house prisoners. (2) The needs of the millions of individuals currently incarcerated in the United States incentivize industrial expansion through the production of goods and materials used inside prisons. (3) Incarcerated individuals are being used to reduce the cost of labor, which expands economic growth. We construct several fixed-effects panel regression models with robust standard errors predicting industrial emissions for U.S. states from 1997 to 2016 to assess how increases in the number of individuals in U.S. state, federal, and private prisons is correlated with industrial emissions over time. We find that increases in incarceration within states are associated with increases in industrial emissions, and that increases in incarceration lead to a more tightly coupled association between gross domestic product per capita and industrial emissions.

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Struggles for Environmental Justice in US Prisons and Jails

Cited by 60 publications

References 40 publications

On Abolition Ecologies and Making “Freedom as a Place”

On Abolition Ecologies and Making “Freedom as a Place”

Carceral and Climate Crises and Health Inequities: A Call for Greater Transparency, Accountability, and Human Rights Protections

Locked into Emissions: How Mass Incarceration Contributes to Climate Change

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