This summer, prisoners at the Garner Correctional Institution (GCI) in Newtown, Connecticut responded to more than two decades of radon exposure at the facility by filing a class-action lawsuit.
“The length of time this went on didn’t have to happen,” said Lori Welch-Rubin, an attorney representing the prisoners along with ...
While lawmakers in Hawaii have advanced bills to fast-track the relocation of a state prison, they were forced to concede that an environmental impact review could not be avoided.
In February 2016, the state legislature held a pair of hearings to consider House Bill 2388 and Senate Bill 2917, which both ...
When journalist Raven Rakia embarked on an investigation of “the Superfund State” of New Jersey, she found another layer to the environmental justice disaster that sits just south of New York City. While New Jersey leads the nation in federally-designated Superfund sites, with 113 listed for pending clean-up, there are ...
Prisons inspire little in terms of natural wonder. It might be a weed rises through a crack and blooms for a moment. It might be a prisoner notices. But prisoners, one could assume, must have little concern for the flowers or for otherwise pressing environmental issues. With all the social ...
“Here’s your water filtration system. By the way, you have a warrant for your arrest.”
Jody Cramer, a former prisoner recently released from Michigan’s Genesee County Jail, said that was the story he heard from multiple other people who were locked up with him. Law enforcement officers distributing filters due ...
by Panagioti Tsolkas
Utah is planning to open a 4,000-bed facility to replace the Utah State Prison in Draper. After several years of considering whether to relocate or rebuild the prison, the state has settled on relocation of the Utah Department of Corrections (DOC) facility.
Draper used to be ...
One of the Largest Solar Power Companies in the U.S. has Ties to Prison Slave Labor
by Panagioti Tsolkas
Prisoners at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Oregon are making solar panels at a UNICOR factory for 93 cents an hour under a tax-break incentivized contract that claims to favor ...
Is Texas Poisoning Prisoners with Contaminated Water?
by Panagioti Tsolkas
When the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) named a prison unit after the late warden Wallace Pack they should have guessed it would have a problem with water, as he once did. In 1981, Pack was drowned by a ...
Persistent, Ongoing Environmental Violations at Washington’s Walla Walla Prison
by Panagioti Tsolkas
Walla Walla State Penitentiary (WSP) in Washington State has a long history of contaminating the surrounding land, water and neighboring communities. Recent reports obtained this year from a public records request submitted by Prison Legal News to the ...
GEO Group’s Gulags Grasping for Green Approval
by Panagioti Tsolkas
All the environmentally-conscious “green” certifications in the world can’t cover up the steady flow of atrocities associated with for-profit prisons, but that’s not going to stop them from trying.
In March 2015, the GEO Group – the nation’s second-largest private ...
