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Prisons as Law-Violators and Sites of Environmental Injustice

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Abstract

Criminologists have firmly established the myriad of harms and inequalities the prison industrial complex produces for those who are incarcerated, their kin, and their communities. Green criminologists and environmental sociologists, though, have begun to examine additional forms of inequities the prison produces: environmental harm and public health concerns. We draw these disciplines together to examine the extent to which correctional institutions parallel other high-polluting industries’ production of environmental harms and injustices by analyzing the Environmental Protection Agency’s ECHO database. Our results help build a case that correctional institutions violate environmental laws and regulations and produce notable environmental harms that the local environment and incarcerated population are forced to be exposed to, and cluster alongside other environmental harms.

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Notes

  1. Private corporations play a substantial but varied role in the prison industrial complex in the U.S. Companies help finance or construct CIs, independently and fully operate CIs, as well as provide varied services for people who are incarcerated (for example manufacturing, telecommunication, and food services). Our sample does not distinguish between facilities that are owned/operated by private corporations, but it is notable that 8% of the total state and federal prison population are confined in private facilities (The Sentencing Project 2021).

  2. While it is out of the scope of this current article to document the type of violation incurred for each facility, the EPA (2021d) notes that information on the type of violation identified for each facility is available within each individual facility report. In the case of CIs, our brief and random exploration of violations included outcomes like noncompliance with the: CWA because of pollution discharges to waterways as well as failures to file discharge monitoring reports; SDWA because of the presence of toxic chemicals in facility drinking water; RCRA because of illegal management of waste; CAA because of presence of high levels of pollutants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, B247 Clark Building, Fort Collins, CO, 80523-1784, USA

    Tara Opsal

  2. Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, B234 Clark Building, Fort Collins, CO, 80523-1784, USA

    Stephanie A. Malin

  3. Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, B269 Clark Building, Fort Collins, CO, 80523-1784, USA

    Taylor Ellis

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  1. Tara Opsal
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Correspondence to Tara Opsal.

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Opsal, T., Malin, S.A. & Ellis, T. Prisons as Law-Violators and Sites of Environmental Injustice. Crit Crim 31, 105–125 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022-09647-8

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