Struggles for Environmental Justice in US Prisons and Jails

In this paper I ask how might environmental justice studies scholarship be recast if we consider the phenomenon of environmental injustice as a form of criminalisation? In other words, since environmental injustice is frequently a product of state-sanctioned violence against communities of colour, then what are the implications of reframing it as a practice of treating those populations as criminally suspect and as deserving of state punishment? Moreover, how are the targets and survivors of environmental injustice/racism enlisted in generative ways that resist that criminalisation and support abolition? I answer these questions through a consideration of how struggles inside and outside of carceral spaces represent urgent and timely opportunities to rethink the possibilities of environmental justice theory and politics by linking them to practices and visions of abolition ecology and critical environmental justice.

Automated summary

This paper examines how environmental justice studies scholarship can be reframed if environmental injustice is considered as a form of criminalization, and explores the implications and challenges of this reframing. It also discusses how struggles inside and outside of carceral spaces present opportunities to rethink environmental justice theory and politics by linking them to abolition ecology and critical environmental justice practices.