Prisons as Law-Violators and Sites of Environmental Injustice

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.