Abolitionist Environmentalism? Querying the power of itemizing the environmental injustices of mass incarceration

• In Event: Abolitionist Environmentalism

Abstract

At the heart of North America’s environmental and carceral injustices are significant accountability shortcomings. These problems converge not just in the hyper-policing of communities of color and the minimal policing and enforcement of the large scale endangerments of environmental pollution, but in the environmental toxicity of prisons themselves. This presentation details the first national study of the environmental violations of all of the almost seven thousand carceral facilities in the US. The findings indicate that the infrastructures charged by the american criminal justice system to be the infrastructures of accountability and repair suffer from massive environmental accountability problems. Our study indicates thousands of environmental violations of carceral facilities across the US, many of which were unknown to the US EPA. While advancing this new data, the presentation further details the potential shortcomings of this method. We will discuss the history of how conditions-focused lawsuits (including environmental conditions) that sought accountability and systems-change in court often enhanced the state’s carceral capacities by leading to hiring more guards, increasing prisoner surveillance, and most importantly, building more prisons. In our practice we ask: what role if any does the leveraging of quantitative environmental health data have in curtailing the flow of people into prison or expanding avenues for early release?

Author

• Nicholas Shapiro, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)