Climate Stress and Gender Behind Bars: Findings from the United States as Lessons for Global Governance

• In Event: Spatial Distribution of Environmental Harms

Abstract

This paper takes the United States as a case study to analyze climate stress and environmental injustice towards incarcerated populations and their communities, with a specific focus on the skyrocketing female incarcerated population. Coming from the background of having initiated a clinical sociological garden intervention in a female community corrections facility in the American Midwest, I focus on prisons as places of toxic contamination. Climate change and global warming exacerbate these conditions on the inside. Taking the United States as a case study on the gendered implications of hyper-incarceration in the age of increasing climate emergency, the paper argues for addressing, analyzing, and including the experiences of incarcerated women in global policy mechanisms, such as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). While CSW deliberations focus on climate change, they do not include incarcerated women. The United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (“Bangkok Rules”), in turn, center human rights of incarcerated women, yet do not address climate crisis and ecological sustainability of incarcerated settings. I argue that feminist thought on prison abolition and climate activism can meaningfully inform future debate and help to connect the dots.

Author

• Daniela Jauk-Ajamie, The University of Akron