Environmental Justice Struggles in
Prisons and Jails around the World
THE 2020 ANNUAL REPORT OF
THE PRISON ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE PROJECT

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
JUSTICE PROJECT UC SANTA BARBARA

TABLE
11.

A

IV.

ACKNO

V.

E EC

OF

CONTENTS

HOR BIOGRAPHIE
LEDGEMEN
I E

MMAR

CHAP ER
CHAPTER 1

(p. 1)

A Hi o of he Ca ce al
S
em in he Uni ed S a e
Fabia a La e Ca

b ia Wi

CHAPTER 4 (p. 51)
Hell on Ea h
S o ie f om P i on and Jail
A o nd he Wo ld
Ca

b ia Wi

Fabia a La e

CHAPTER 2 (p.14)
P i on Labo and V lne abili
F om En i onmen al Di a e
o
Di a e of Con me Ca i ali m
Ca

b ia Wi

E ijah Ba e

CHAPTER 5 (p. 68)
Religio and E hnic
Pe ec ion in he
Middle Ea and A ia
Fabia a La e E ijah Ba e

CHAPTER 3 (p. 33)
The Wa e

a black

The Figh fo Clean Wa e in
U S P i on and Jail
Da id Pe

CHAPTER 6 (p. 90)
A Pa h Fo

a d

Global S cce in Dec iminali a ion
Refo m and Re en
o Socie
E ijah Ba e

i

Author Biographies
David N. Pellow:
Dr. David N. Pellow is the Dehlsen Chair and Professor of Environmental Studies and
Director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California,
Santa Barbara where he teaches courses on social change movements, environmental
justice, human-animal conflicts, sustainability, and social inequality.
He has published a number of works on environmental justice issues in communities of
color in the U.S. and globally. His books include: What is Critical Environmental
Justice? (Polity Press, 2017); Keywords for Environmental Studies (editor, with Joni
Adamson and William Gleason, New York University Press, 2016); Total Liberation: The
Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement (University of
Minnesota Press, 2014); The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in
America’s Eden (with Lisa Sun-Hee Park, New York University Press, 2011); The
Treadmill of Production: Injustice and Unsustainability in the Global Economy (with
Kenneth Gould and Allan Schnaiberg, Paradigm Press, 2008); Resisting Global Toxics:
Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice (MIT Press, 2007); The Silicon
Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech
Global Economy (with Lisa Sun-Hee Park, New York University Press, 2002); Garbage
Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago (MIT Press, 2002); Urban
Recycling and the Search for Sustainable Community Development (with Adam
Weinberg and Allan Schnaiberg, Princeton University Press, 2000); Power, Justice, and
the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement (editor,
with Robert J. Brulle, MIT Press, 2005); and Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and
Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry (co-editor, with Ted Smith,
David Sonnenfeld, and Leslie Byster, Temple University Press, 2006). He has consulted
for and served on the Boards of Directors of several community-based, national, and
international organizations that are dedicated to improving the living and working
environments for people of color, immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and working class
communities, including the Central Coast Climate Justice Network, Community
Environmental Council, Global Action Research Center, the Center for Urban
Transformation, Greenpeace USA, International Rivers, Community Environmental
Council, the Fund for Santa Barbara, the Prison Ecology Project. He earned his B.A. in

ii

Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1992. He
earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University in 1998.

Fabiana R. Lake:
Fabiana Lake is a fourth year Environmental Studies major with a minor in Latin
American and Iberian Studies. Within these disciplines she is focusing on the
intersection of minority’s rights and environmental injustices. Fabiana has worked as a
photographer for UCSB Sustainability and volunteered as a teacher’s assistant with
underprivileged Colombian children and Venezuelan refugees in Medellin, Colombia.
She is currently working with the Santa Barbara Immigrant Legal Defense Center
educating undocumented families on their rights relating to immigration. These
experiences have revealed to her how deeply unequal the world is, and developed her
passion to amplify voices of the oppressed.

Cambria A. Wilson:
Cambria Wilson is currently pursuing an Environmental Studies degree at UCSB. She
has been Publicity Chair for the Environmental Justice Alliance, a teacher for the
Educating Future Leaders Program, and researched conservation in Chile by observing
the relationship between Mapuche peoples and local ecosystems. Now, she works for
the Prison Environmental Justice Project. She aims to amplify awareness surrounding
intersectional challenges of environmentalism and social equity by demonstrating
progressive action for marginalized demographics, providing a space for constructive
discourse, and encouraging collaboration. She is passionate about helping people help
themselves and each other by creating a culture of consciousness and unity.

Elijah J. Baker:
Elijah Baker currently works with UCSB’s Environmental Studies Program as an
undergraduate advisor. He graduated from UCSB with a B.A. in Environmental Studies
and a minor in Professional Writing in March of 2018.
Originally from Barstow, CA, Elijah feels a connection to the struggle for environmental
justice and social equity that disadvantaged communities so often experience. He is
passionate about social justice and aspires to work with, and for, frontline communities
fighting for environmental justice. He is particularly interested in the intersection of
policy and climate justice.

iii

Acknowledgements
This report is the result of the amazing intellectual, creative, and physical
labor and support of so many people. They include the authors, of course,
but also our good colleagues and friends: Valerie Gonzalez (thank you for
your amazing graphic design skills and for creating a fabulous cover design
for this report!), Boris Palencia, Martin Rodriguez, Erinn O’Shea, Vivian
Stopple, Eric Zimmerman, Panagioti Tsolkas, Jordan Mazurek, the
Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, and the UC Santa Barbara Environmental
Studies Program.
The Prison Environmental Justice Project is an initiative of the University of
California Santa Barbara's Global Environmental Justice Project and this
report can be found at https://gejp.es.ucsb.edu/

iv

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE STRUGGLES IN
PRISONS AND JAILS AROUND THE WORLD
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Prisons and jails around the globe are sites of heart-wrenching, stomach-turning
violence and brutality, perpetrated by the governments and corporations that build and
manage them. These abuses intersect with and reinforce a myriad of environmental injustices.
Specifically, the evidence of water contamination, air pollution exposure, poor nutrition and
woefully inadequate medical care, torture and neglect in carceral facilities around the world is
widespread and overwhelming. What we document in this report are the many ways that
environmental injustices also reflect what we call the incarceration-extraction nexus--those
intersections between the act of extracting people out of our communities and caging them in
prisons and jails where they are subjected to a range of abuses, and the act of extracting
wealth from and poisoning our ecosystems. In some instances, we find that entire communities
are living in “open air prisons” wherein their daily lives, freedoms, and mobility are restricted
and controlled by occupying governments. In those cases, while the people are not being
extracted, their labor and ecological resources usually are, and they face additional
environmental and public health threats associated with colonization. In this Annual Report, the
UCSB Prison Environmental Justice Project provides data, stories, and analysis of these
challenges in great detail. We offer historical data and narratives to provide context and a
deeper understanding of how we got into this mess. We also present myriad examples of how
prisoners and their allies are fighting back to create more livable conditions in these facilities
and to ultimately abolish the prison industrial complex as we know it.
Chapters 1 and 2 offer historical and contemporary examinations of the use of prison
labor in the U.S. and other nations, with specific attention to how this system of racial
domination has changed and resisted change over time. We draw the reader’s attention to the
many links between forced/enslaved labor and the ways in which governments and
corporations use inmates to perform undesirable and dangerous work associated with climate
change-driven “natural disasters.” Chapter 3 explores cases of water contamination in jails and

v

immigrant prisons in the U.S., with an emphasis on highlighting resistance efforts by prisoners
and their allies on the outside. That focus underscores the fact that we can all be leaders in the
movement for environmental justice and prison abolition, no matter which side of the prison
wall you live on. Chapter 4 takes the reader on a journey around the world to examine
horrifying conditions in prisons where food injustice, rampant disease, forced labor, abysmal
sanitation, medical negligence and overcrowding are prevalent. We then consider, in Chapter
5, the ongoing racist, state violence against ethnic, religious and/or cultural “minority” groups
in China and Israel, detailing the persecution of the Palestinian people, the Uyghurs, Tibetans,
and Falun Gong followers. This persecution takes many forms, including inside formal carceral
facilities and inside what are often called open air prisons--where entire communities are under
siege by an occupying governmental power. These ongoing forms of institionalized violence
and genocide engender outrage and resistance, and the Prison Environmental Justice Project
stands in solidarity with the movements fighting for the liberation of these oppressed
communities. Finally, Chapter 6 presents a more hopeful consideration of successful efforts at
decriminalization and prison reform from various nations, demonstrating that, in addition to
being inherently harmful and counterproductive, prisons and imprisonment are anything but
natural or inevitable, and can be challenged, changed, and, ultimately abolished.
We invite you to read each chapter, to engage the writing, arguments, and evidence,
and to contact us with questions, concerns, or suggestions, and we implore you to join the
movements for prisoner rights, environmental and climate justice, human rights, and abolition.
The Prison Environmental Justice Project is an initiative of UCSB's Global Environmental Justice
Project and this report can be found at https://gejp.es.ucsb.edu/.

iv

A History of the Carceral
System in the United
States of America

By: Fabiana Lake and
Cambria Wilson

1

The United States of America incarcerates far more people than any other country.
While making up only four percent of the world’s total population, the U.S. holds a staggering
25 percent of the prison population. Black and brown people are incarcerated at far higher
rates than white people in the U.S. and, throughout history, numerous laws have been passed
to ensure this arrangement. In the U.S. today, Black people are 5.9 times more likely to be
imprisoned than a white person, while a Hispanic person is 3.1 times more likely to be
imprisoned than a white person.i According to the Bureau of Justice (the US Department of
Justice’s primary statistical agency), Native Americans are also incarcerated at a rate 38%
higher than the national average.ii These tragic truths are the legacy left by those who opposed
the abolition of slavery. Our prison system began with convict leasing directly after the era of
chattel slavery, which was a way for the South to continue to legally profit off of Black people’s
labor and disenfranchisement. The system morphed and changed throughout history, gradually
becoming what it is today. While changes and improvements have been made since the
beginning of the carceral age of America, in examining the past, we see far too many aspects
that have yet to see reform. This persistence of injustice is by design, and is one of many
reasons why so many scholars and advocates call for the abolition of the prison system.

The Convict Leasing Era

The practice of convict leasing was most prevalent in the Southern United States, began
in the mid 1800s and, depending on the state, ended somewhere between 1896 and 1928.
Most states began convict leasing after the formal end of the chattel slavery period, when the
13th Amendment passed (although a select few like Alabama and Texas began convict leasing
prior to the Civil War).iii Many slave plantations, such as Angola in Louisiana, Eastham in Texas,
and Parchman in Mississippi were simply converted into convict labor farms after the U.S. Civil
War.iv In the wake of the Civil War and the legal abolition of slavery, convict leasing emerged
as a new form of cheap, exploitative labor designed to maintain white supremacy and Black
subjugation. Most states began their leasing era by paying lessees to take convicts off of their
hands. After a few years, states realized the profit potential of convict leasing, and began to
charge private contractors for the convicts, creating a huge source of revenue for states’

2

treasuries. State governments were inspired to derive as much profit from this new source of
revenue as possible, so in 1875, many Southern states passed laws stipulating that theft of
property with a value of $2 or more was punishable by one to five years in prison. Mississippi
had its own version of this legislation, called the Pig Law, which deemed any theft of a cow or
pig a form of grand larceny, punishable by up to 5 years in prison. These laws were directed at
the Black community and poor whites, and they caused the prison population to skyrocket.
Between 1876 and 1882, the South's prison population increased by 50%.v Between 1872 and
1890, Tennessee’s inmate population increased by 80%, and between 1871 and 1879, the
state of Mississippi quadrupled its incarcerated population.vi The most common method of
leasing was a system in which lessees paid a set sum for a group of convicts, and were then in
total control over every aspect of their lives; this included convict’s diets, a guard force to
ensure convicts did not escape, housing and labor, and lessees then reaped all profits from the
convicts’ labor. The state’s oversight was minimal, so lessees frequently perpetrated severe
abuses with respect to inmates’ diets, living conditions, and working conditions and schedules,
leading to thousands of deaths among workers.vii
Most states' incarcerated populations were heavily Black, extremely disproportionate to the
overall racial composition of the respective state’s population. In 1873, 185 out of 219 inmates
in Alabama were Black. In 1901, South Carolina convicted 80% of arrested Blacks, while only
convicting 60% of arrested white people. At the turn of the 20th century, Texas was
incarcerating Blacks
at seven times the
rate of whites.viii
Perhaps the
most chilling fact
about the convict
leasing system was
that it was far
deadlier than chattel
slavery in the U.S.

Photo 1: Male prisoners hoeing in a field. Digital Image. Innocence Project.

3

because lessees only rented inmates and did not own them (as compared to the chattel slavery
system); thus they had less investment and less incentive to care for their workforce. An
Alabama inmate guard in a coal mine recalls being instructed to shoot to kill, since “a dead
convict didn’t cost nothin’”.ix While chattel slavery masters had to ensure the survival of the
entire enslaved population, including the elderly and sick, lessees only got the best, hardest
working, physically fit inmates, and frequently worked them to death. Under convict leasing,
inmates mainly worked on cotton and other agricultural plantations, coal mines, turpentine
farms, brickyards and sawmills.x Convicts worked for as long as there was light, sometimes
waking up at 4:30 a.m. to begin the job, and workdays tended to be 12-15 hours long. Inmates
had to work through sickness, and if they complained, they were often brutally whipped.
Lessees were able to work inmates so hard because they were simply renting the inmates as a
body, as historian Dr. Matthew J Mancini titled his book, the motto was “one dies, get
another;” convicts were disposable.xi Lessees working inmates to death was tragically common.
According to historian Dr. David Oshinsky, author of Worse Than Slavery, “Not a single leased
convict ever lived long enough to serve a sentence of ten years or more”.xii
After 12-15-hour days, inmates retired to living conditions that rivaled the atrocities of
the work day. Many inmates lived in converted boxcars or cages in which they could not fully
stand erect. They were given one bucket as a toilet. The housing was overrun with vermin, lice
and other insects and was generally always filthy. In railway camps, inmates were often chained
together by smaller chains connected to one central chain in the middle of their quarters.xiii
Inmates were not given sufficient clothing. Those who worked in the Alabama coal mines were
legally entitled to one change of clothes per week. However, when a fire started in the living
quarters near one mine and the fire Marshall investigated, he found that inmates never
changed their mining suits, which were called muckers. One inmate informed investigators,
“you don’t change muckers at all...Just wear it out. Wear it out and when you do, they give you
a new suit.”xiv This, the fire Marshall reasoned, had contributed significantly to the fire,
considering the muckers were covered in grease from weeks in the mines. Insufficient clothing
for inmates was an issue all around the South. Inmates in Mississippi frequently got frostbite
during the winter because they were not given shoes during the cold months. In 1884, a group

4

of convicts in Mississippi was being transferred to a new location, and they were not allowed to
walk through the town because they were “emaciated, half-clothed, frostbitten convicts,”xv and
lessees knew that if the public witnessed the horrid treatment of this convict group, resistance
would ensue. Inmates in Tennessee generally had no pajamas and slept naked, two in a bed,
and Texas inmates were given neither socks nor underwear, and had the same clothing no
matter the season.xvi Diseases like smallpox, scurvy, syphilis, typhoid, pneumonia, dysentery
and countless others ran rampant in the labor camps, often taking the lives of inmates.
Between June 1st and November 30th of 1872, 20 Mississippi inmates died of malaria and
pneumonia. An inmate in a Texas jail said that the inmates around him had such bad scurvy
that their teeth were falling out.xvii One especially troubling practice was that the Tennessee
penal system found a way to profit off of the dead bodies of inmates, by selling them to
medical schools in Nashville.xviii
Convict deaths generally resulted from a lack of sanitation, being overworked, and poor
diets. Inmates were often underfed and food was generally rotten or undercooked. Convicts
throughout Tennessee complained that the only meat they were given was in an unappetizing,
undercooked stew. Besides this, they mainly subsisted off of bread and molasses, with
occasional fruits and vegetables.xix In Texas, “the meat ration was only hog … with the
excrement still on them, and only half cooked.”xx These appalling diets, along with abysmal
living conditions and harsh labor conditions allowed lessees to save money on caring for
inmates, and therefore maximize profit.
The convict leasing system, although it was a known evil to many Southerners, persisted
for so long because it was incredibly lucrative. In 1883, Alabama brought in 10% of its total
state revenue from convict leasing, and in 1898 that number increased to 73%, while the state
only spent $45 on bedding that year.xxi Between 1888 and 1928, Alabama leased the majority
of its inmates to Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI), and during that period, TCI
merged with United States Steel, creating the US’s first billion-dollar corporation. Not only was
each state and lessee profiting greatly from convict leasing, but subleasing (when lessees lease
their convict workforce to another contractor) was made legal in most southern states, creating
three tiers of profit derived off of the backs of inmates.xxii Subleasing was accompanied by the

5

same host of issues associated with leasing, but was further removed from state oversight, and
therefore even more inhumane with worse conditions than lease conditions.
In 1896, Tennessee abolished convict leasing, and soon after, other states followed suit,
with Arkansas being the last in 1928.xxiii Convict leasing ended in Tennessee, as well as other
states in part due to public outcry. Free miners could not get jobs because the convict system
rivaled their work, and cost employers less. Leasing often depressed free labor wages, which
meant employers could get skilled labor for close to convict labor prices. Free miners in
Tennessee violently protested against convicts “taking” their jobs.xxiv This sort of situation
occurred in other states as well. For example, in the state of Texas, a combination of public
outcry and pressure from progressive government officials contributed to the abolition of the
system.xxv Another reason that convict leasing ended was that putting inmates to work on stateowned farms was becoming more lucrative than leasing.xxvi There were many factors
contributing to the end of the leasing system, but the primary issue was money. States did
what was in their economic interest, and in the early 1900s, that meant putting an end to
leasing.

Convict Leasing’s Replacement: Parchman Penal Farm in the Early 1900’s

The end of the convict leasing system was portrayed as a huge improvement in human
rights. However, many of the issues that had plagued convict leasing persisted under the new
state run system. Angola, Eastham, Parchman and other slave plantations that became convict
leasing plantations were purchased by the state, so convicts saw no change in the abolition of
leasing.xxvii Forced labor, horrible living conditions causing disease and death, insufficient and
inedible food, torture, racism and exploitation plagued the carceral system far past the end of
the convict leasing era. The shift from private forced labor to public forced labor brought
minimal reforms.
The state of Mississippi purchased the Parchman Penal Farm in 1901, because of its
prime location for growing cotton.xxviii In the first half of the 20th century, it appeared that the
only thing that had changed at Parchman plantation since the chattel slavery era was the forced
labor systems title. The prison population was 90% black and the warden lived in a mansion,

6

with inmate servants tending to his every need.xxix On the farm, inmates worked 12-15 hour
days with the blazing hot sun beating down on their backs. Convicts were overseen by people
known as Trusty Shooters--armed inmate guards, chosen based upon their ability to intimidate
other inmates; they were often murder convicts. On the farm, inmates died of heatstroke, of
being overworked, and of disease and shackle poisoning, which is caused by iron shackles
rubbing on bare skin and thus poisoning the inmates.xxx Inmates lived in squalor--there were
open ditches full of medical waste and sewage around the plantation. Drinking water was
contaminated and one inmate recalls having to crumble his cornbread on top of his food so as
to not see the bugs that infested his meal. Mattresses were rotting and vermin and bugs
infested all parts of the facility.xxxi 80 inmates shared three wash basins made from cut open oil
drums. Broken windows were stuffed with rags to keep out the cold.xxxii Inmates were tortured
using a variety of methods. For example, they would routinely sing freedom songs, and if they
refused to stop, their bedding would be confiscated. When a group of protesters was
incarcerated at Parchman, the facility stuffed eight inmates into one cell; the inmates were
stripped naked and fed laxatives, causing the one toilet in the cell to quickly overflow.xxxiii These
abysmal conditions and cases of torture continued well into the second half of the 20th century.
A prison reformist gathered information on murders, rapes, beatings and tortures at Parchman
between 1969 and 1971. This report outlined heinous incidents like “Humes, George –
Handcuffed to bars, on tiptoes for 2 days without food, water or bathroom facilities.”xxxiv
Parchman’s primary purpose was profit, not reform, and in that it was successful. In its first two
years in operation, Parchman brought in the equivalent of $5 million today.xxxv
In 1971, a class action lawsuit regarding the living and working conditions at Parchman
resulted in a judge ordering an end to the Trusty System at Parchman, and major
improvements in the facility. While this lawsuit improved Parchman a bit, the facility still had a
long way to go in terms of humane treatment; for example, it was not until 1971 that
Mississippi outlawed the whipping of inmates.xxxvi Many inmates and visitors say that while the
image of Parchman has improved over the years, the reality remains the same: inmates pick
fruits and vegetables instead of cotton, but still toil long hours in the blazing sun. There have
been scant if any improvements in sanitation, water and food quality over the years.xxxvii

7

These deplorable conditions that Parchman inmates experienced were fairly consistent
across the American South in the 1900s. Texas prisoners were underfed, barely clothed and
plagued by diseases like tuberculosis, syphilis and much more. In 1911, 2,910 out of the state’s
3,471 inmates worked in the fields, the highest percentage of inmates working in the fields that
Texas had ever seen.xxxviii Inmates were supposed to be paid for their labor, but they almost
never saw this money, and in the 1910s, the carceral system was mired in debt, so its
supervisory board voted to suspend convict payments. Torture methods also saw changes; the
whip was replaced by the dark cell in Texas in the 1910s. The dark cell was a 7 foot by 7 foot
box with little ventilation. Dark cell sentences began as a few hours, but guards considered this
to be too short, so they extended it to days. In one horrific example, 12 inmates were left in a
dark cell for 16 hours, and when the guards opened the doors, eight inmates had perished and
the remaining four were gasping for breath at the ventilation pipes on the floor.xxxix Racism was
extremely prevalent in the Texas system. The Texas prison system was particularly racist
because until the 1980s, the state did not have a single prison facility outside of the slavery
belt, which was where all the slave plantations had previously been located due to prime
agricultural conditions.xl Each of the plantations had changed ownership through an evolution
of parallel systems of oppression: from slave masters, to lessees, to the state.
Inmates across the country resisted the harsh labor requirements of imprisonment. In Texas,
self-mutilation became common in the 1930s and 1940s as a method of resisting forced labor.
From 1940 to 1944 there were 273 reported cases of self-mutilation in Texas.xli The most
common form was severing achilleas tendons, rendering inmates unable to work. Inmates also
tried “bugging”--cutting a wound, then packing it with lye to create a festering sore.xlii In the
1930s, 31 inmates at Angola prison plantation cut their achilleas tendons to protest working
conditions. xliii Harsh working conditions called for extreme resistance.
By the mid 20th century, the rhetoric politicians used to describe the criminal legal
system transitioned from blatant racism to “law and order.” A multitude of laws were passed in
tandem with cultural influences, thus perpetuating the growth of the carceral system. Perhaps,
the most notable of which was President Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs, which was formally
declared in 1971, despite the then-current decline in drug use in the United States.xliv From

8

President Ronald Reagan's Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 to President Bill Clinton’s Habitual
Offender Laws (also known as the Three-Strikes laws) of 1994, dozens of new crimes were
defined and sentencing became more severe. Meanwhile, budgets for carceral facilities were
increased by billions of dollars, as were contracts with private companies. Decade after
decade, the amount of incarcerated people per capita increased until the United States held
the most inmates in the world, by far. In 1972, the United States held less than 350,000 people
in prisons and today, it holds 2.2 million--more than any other nation on earth.

Today: Parchman’s Current State

Throughout the years since the era of chattel slavery, the incarceration of Black people,
other people of color, and lower income whites has changed and reflects the optics of reform.
However, even a casual observation of the Parchman Penal Farm today illustrates just how little
progress we have made. Mississippi is the poorest and blackest state in the nation, and of the
state’s inmates, 80% are Black, while only 37% of the state's free population is Black.xlv A report
detailing conditions inside the facility was published in 2019. The report found that Parchman
lacked water, lights and electric power. Many toilets and sinks were not working, and roofs
leaked. The report concluded that there was black mold in the prison cells, considerable
volumes of raw sewage around the facility, and exposed wiring. Moreover, water pipes were
rusty and moldy and the facility was overrun by a variety of animals and vermin.xlvi Unit 29 in
particular--a complex of 12 buildings--was singled out for its failing infrastructure. The unit is
uninhabitable, yet inmates are kept there nonetheless. There have been reports of inmates
having no access to running water or electricity for weeks. Inmates have had to wade through a
mix of sewage and water in their cells due to lack of plumbing services and poor sanitation.
There have also been reports of water pipes breaking and water pouring into cells.xlvii In
January 2020, videos and photographs surfaced, showing brown water coming out of the tap
that inmates said smelled like sewage, with no other source of bath water or drinking water. xlviii
One inmate claimed that the highest rates of cancer in the Mississippi Department of
Corrections system are a result of the polluted water that they are forced to drink.xlix The
facility’s walls are covered with mildew and black mold. According to the World Health

9

Organization, mold exposure can result in the increased prevalence of respiratory disorders,
asthma, allergies, and damage to one’s immunological system.l
Inmates are inadequately fed and one inmate reported being given empty trays at meal
times, which made it appear on camera as if prisoners are being fed, thus leaving officials
protected from public criticism while inmates go hungry. Other inmates said they had not been
fed in 10 hours. When inmates are fed, ratios are miniscule and meat is usually rotten.
-

f-

Thread

This is tap water from the faucets at Parchman State
Prison in Mississippi. The men say it smells like sewerthis is what they are forced to bathe in and drink ...

Photo 2: Tap water from Parchman Prison: the only water inmates
are provided with to bathe in and drink. Digital Image. Twitter
@PrisonReformMvt.

Photo 3: A meal served to Parchman
inmates. Digital Image. Clarion Ledger.

Inmates are not given mattresses and are forced to sleep on the freezing concrete, which is
sometimes wet and covered in blood due to outbreaks of violence, such as the riots that
occurred in 2020.li lii These conditions have contributed to a variety of illnesses and inmates are
rarely able to get medical attention. In January, over 20 inmates died in Parchman. Most
deaths were either suicides or homicides due to violence or riots that were in large part a
response to Parchman’s failing infrastructure and living conditions. Inmates have grown
increasingly more violent as a result of the unbearable situation at the facility.liii In 21st century
America, inmates are living no better than they were in the 1800s under convict leasing.

10

Conclusion

Throughout American history, the carceral system has been used as a form of free labor,
as well as punishment - often extremely disproportionate to crime - with minimal, if any
emphasis on reform and rehabilitation. Considering that the carceral system began its ascent in
the wake of slavery, it is no surprise that the system has been riddled with severe racism across
the totality of its existence, and remains so today. The commodification of black and brown
labor has proven to be extremely lucrative, and power-hungry officials place profit over
humanity, severely exploiting vulnerable populations like inmates. On top of forced labor,
prisoners are subjected to horrendous environmental injustices including inedible food, lack of
clothing and bedding, dilapidated infrastructure and lack of medical care. The carceral system
has seen changes and reforms through the years. However, the fact that it is still seen as a
profit driven industry rather than a social service that produces reform and rehabilitation
severely inhibits any significant, beneficial change from being implemented.

i

“Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System,” The Sentencing
Project, accessed August 30, 2020, https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racialdisparities/.
ii
The Sentencing Project, “Report to United Nations-- Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States
Criminal Justice System,” Report of The Sentencing Project to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance - Regarding
Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System, March 2018,
https://communityresourcehub.org/resources/report-of-the-sentencing-project-to-the-united-nationsspecial-rapporteur-on-contemporary-forms-of-racism-racial-discrimination-xenophobia-and-relatedintolerance-regarding-racial-disparities-i/.
iii
Robert Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire (175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010).
iv
Matthew J. Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928
(Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1996).
v
Mancini.
vi
Mancini.
vii
Mancini.
viii
Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire.
ix
Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928, 37.
x
Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928.
xi
Mancini.
xii
David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New
York, New York: FREE PRESS PAPERBACKS, 1996), 106–7.
xiii
Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928.

11

xiv

Mancini, 65.
Mancini, 138.
xvi
Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928.
xvii
Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire.
xviii
Perkinson.
xix
Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928.
xx
Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire, 184.
xxi
Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928.
xxii
Mancini.
xxiii
Mancini.
xxiv
Mancini.
xxv
Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire.
xxvi
Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928.
xxvii
Mancini.
xxviii
Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice.
xxix
Innocence Staff, “The Lasting Legacy of Parchman Farm, the Prison Modeled After a Slave
Plantation,” Innocence Project, May 29, 2020, https://www.innocenceproject.org/parchman-farm-prisonmississippi-history/.
xxx
Innocence Staff.
xxxi
Innocence Staff.
xxxii
Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice.
xxxiii
Oshinsky.
xxxiv
Oshinsky, 503.
xxxv
Innocence Staff, “The Lasting Legacy of Parchman Farm, the Prison Modeled After a Slave
Plantation.”
xxxvi
Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. Gates v. Collier
(1974)
xxxvii
Innocence Staff, “The Lasting Legacy of Parchman Farm, the Prison Modeled After a Slave
Plantation.”
xxxviii
Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire.
xxxix
Perkinson.
xl
Perkinson.
xli
Perkinson.
xlii
Perkinson.
xliii
Alex Layton, “Angola Prison and the Ethics of Prison Labor,” The Prindle Post (blog), January 29,
2019, https://www.prindlepost.org/2019/01/angola-prison-ethics-prison-labor/.
xliv
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (The New Press, 2010).
xlv
Innocence Staff, “The Lasting Legacy of Parchman Farm, the Prison Modeled After a Slave Plantation.”
xlvi
Michelle Liu, “No Water, No Lights and Broken Toilets: Parchman Health Inspection Uncovers
Hundreds of Problems, Many Repeat Violations,” Mississippi Today, August 5, 2019,
https://mississippitoday.org/2019/08/05/no-water-no-lights-and-broken-toilets-parchman-healthinspection-uncovers-hundreds-of-problems-many-repeat-violations/.
xlvii
Erin Haney, 75 Erin Haney, Decarceration Nation with Josh Adn Joel (Spotify, 2020).
xlviii
“PRM (C.Leonard) #BLM ✊✊ on Twitter,” Twitter, accessed September 27, 2020,
https://twitter.com/PrisonReformMvt/status/1148973888048697346.
xlix
Brother Ben X, Parchman Prison in Mississippi Conditions, Kodak Black Abused and Starved in
Prison., Podcast, Brother Ben X (Youtube, 2020).
l
Woodman, “Mold-Infested Prisons Sicken Guards and Prisoners.”
li
Haney, 75 Erin Haney.
lii
Ben X, Parchman Prison in Mississippi Conditions, Kodak Black Abused and Starved in Prison.
liii
Haney, 75 Erin Haney.
xv

12

Photos, Graphics and Figures:
Title-page Photo: Photo of Alcatraz Prison. By Emiliano Bar. 2 January 2019
https://unsplash.com/photos/PaKHbtTDqt0
Photo 1: Male prisoners hoeing in a field. Digital Image. Innocence Project. 29 May 2020.
https://innocenceproject.org/parchman-farm-prison-mississippi-history/
Photo 2: Tap water from Parchman Prison: the only water inmates are provided with to bathe in and drink. Digital
Image. Twitter @PrisonReformMvt. 10 July 2019.
https://twitter.com/prisonreformmvt/status/1148973888048697346?lang=en
Photo 3: A meal served to Parchman inmates. Digital Image. Clarion Ledger. 17 July 2020.
https://www.clarionledger.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2020/01/08/parchman-prison-mississippi-photosinside/2838156001/

13

Prison Labor and Vulnerability:
From Environmental Disasters to
Disasters of Consumer
Capitalism

By: Cambria Wilson and
Elijah Baker

14

Prison labor is so ingrained in our cultural fabric that many of us do not question its
widespread use or our own relationship to it. Many big companies like Chevron, Nintendo,
Walmart, Victoria’s Secret, Whole Foods, Starbucks, and AT&T have, and continue, to use
prison labor to manufacture, farm, and assemble many of the goods we purchase. In this
chapter, we argue that incarcerated people qualify as a vulnerable community with few legal
protections, despite the far-reaching impact of their work. Prison labor is a complex and
nuanced subject, and there are points passionately argued on each side. Proponents contend
that the work gives inmates an opportunity to earn their keep, learn new skills, and, ultimately,
be more prepared to return to life after incarceration. However, while there are likely examples
of non-exploitative prison labor programs, we conclude that the current system of prison labor
in the U.S. is inherently harmful because inmates lose many of their basic human and labor
rights. We argue that, because inmate labor touches so many aspects of civilian life, they must
decide where they stand on this issue. To better understand the underpinnings of prison labor
and how it is both a human rights and environmental justice concern, we need to understand
its foundation in the United States, explore some of the critical forms of prison labor we rely
on, and consider how prison labor abroad also touches our lives.

Legal Background

The expansion of prisons and prison labor in the U.S. can be traced back to the
abolition of slavery. The 13th Amendment, which made it illegal to force another human being
into indentured servitude, includes a clause that explicitly allows prison labor. Section 1 of the
13th Amendment reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for
crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or
any place subject to their jurisdiction.”i This exception within the 13th Amendment created a
loophole for states to criminalize the behavior of freed Black Americans and to force them into
servitude.ii The first forms of prison labor, a period defined by “convict leasing”, is described
in-depth in Chapter 1, A History of Incarceration in the United States. Since this clause has not
been amended, slavery can, and still does, exist in the United States as a form of punishment
for incarcerated persons. America’s racist history of enslavement continues today through

15

prison labor, where African Americans and Latinos make up 56% of our prison population,
despite being only 29% of the United States population.iii
There are essentially three different prison systems in the U.S.: public prisons, which are
operated by the federal or state governments, private prisons, which operate in the same
fashion as a corporation, and immigration detention centers, ⅔ of which are operated by
private prisons.iv Though the work and the vulnerabilities inmates face varies based on the
type of prison, inmate labor is a common practice across each of these systems.
In fact, “all individuals incarcerated in a federal prison who have been medically cleared
are required to work.”v Inmates are excluded from various labor laws that free people consider
a basic human right, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Fair Labor Standards
Act, the Equal Pay Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Federal Tort Claims Act, since
they are not considered "employees” of the prison.vi In other words, prisoners are not entitled
to protections against racial or gender discrimination, nor do they have the right to safe
working conditions, to unionize, or to fair wages under the United States law.vii The average
wage for prison labor varies by prison, gender and type of labor, but fluctuates between $0.12
to $1.15 an hour on average for federal inmates, while for state inmate wages range from $0.13
to $0.32, compared to the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage.viii As of 2017, state laws in
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and Texas allowed inmates to be required to work for
$0.00 per hour.ix Some states, such as Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida and Georgia, allow
inmates to earn time off of their sentences instead of being paid a wage.x There is also no set
retirement age in U.S. prisons and it is legal to deny prisoners’ requests for time off for medical
leave. In addition, inmates are not guaranteed the right to choose their jobs, are often not
informed of the risks of their employment, and can be punished for refusing to work. These
punishments can include solitary confinement, loss of privileges, and, in some instances, loss of
accrued “good behavior” privileges.xi
Past court rulings have found that inmates, who can be forced into performing labor
under the 13th Amendment, are not technically employees of the prison system. As such, they
are not entitled to any of the listed workers’ rights and protections that are guaranteed to all
employees in the U.S.xii

16

Prison Labor & Vulnerability in Disasters

ICE and Immigrant Detention
As of March 2020, “Over 37,000 people are in ICE (Immigration Customs and
Enforcement) facilities nationwide, and about half of them have not been formally accused or
convicted of any crime aside from civil immigration violations”.xiii As reported by The New York
Times, “immigrant detention is civil confinement, not criminal. People held in these facilities
are not charged with any crime; they are being detained while awaiting asylum or deportation
hearings.”xiv However, even though detainees may not have been “duly convicted” of a crime,
they are still regularly forced to partake in laborious work, through the sardonically named
Voluntary Work Program. Detainees are often made to do all the work that you might imagine
facility staff doing: cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.xv Detainees report being punished for taking
time off or refusing to work, and have experienced essential items being withheld from them
by staff members.xvi In addition, ICE detention centers are only required to pay detainees $1.00
a day, a rate set by Congress in 1950.xvii In ICE Detention centers, detainees frequently need to
purchase supplies for themselves at an inflated price from the central store. For example, the
New York Times reports that 4 ounces of toothpaste sells for a shocking $11.00.xviii As of this
writing, there are 6 active lawsuits currently filed against ICE detention facilities, alleging abuse
through the Voluntary Work Program.xix

Natural Disasters
Incarcerated people often play vital roles in ensuring the safety and wellbeing of nonincarcerated communities. This is questionable since data suggests that while inmates work to
mitigate the damage of manmade and natural disasters, they are incredibly vulnerable to these
disasters themselves. This is due to a plethora of reasons, including lack of access to essential
resources, utter dependence on those in positions of authority, physical immobility and, of
course, the increasing severity of climate related events. Additionally, imprisoned people have
been strategically excluded from the majority of government and public discussions regarding
emergency preparedness and who qualifies as a vulnerable population. Out of 47 state

17

emergency planning documents (Delaware, Tennessee & New Jersey’s are unavailable to the
public), only 32% of states identified inmates as a vulnerable population; that same percentage
of states also define inmates as a labor source and as a “hazard” because they are viewed as a
threat to public safety. Moreover, 18% of state reports described incarcerated people solely as
a labor source, and not a vulnerable population. In fact, 64% of states directly mention the
utilization of Inmate Labor Force (ILF) in their emergency response and recovery activities.
Furthermore, 17 different emergency response and recovery activities were explicitly assigned
to inmate labor forces within these reports (and more than one third of the states doing this are
located in the South).xx Where there is a clearly defined plan requiring the protection of
detainees, lack of funding and training often leave facilities and staff unprepared to enact such
plans.xxi Simply put, inmates lack the agency and resources to protect themselves, and their
superiors are seldom able to protect them as well. Judging by the way states define their
incarcerated populations, detainees are more likely to be regarded as labor sources or hazards
than as potential victims of natural disasters and other emergencies. In identifying inmates
specifically as a threat or a cheap source for disaster cleanup, states are much less likely to view
incarcerated lives as valuable and worth prioritizing. We have to reevaluate how we think of
inmates to prevent adding to the social abuse and isolation that imprisonment inherently
imposes upon them.

Hurricanes
Inmates are routinely treated unjustly in the wake of extreme hazards, and yet they are
still expected to mitigate harmful effects for others. In 2016, when Hurricane Harvey, a
Category 4 storm, made landfall in Beaumont, Texas, over 8,000 inmates in three different
state prisons and one federal facility were left to face that threat with no assistance.xxii None of
them were evacuated. Rather, they were forced to remain in place as trees, utility poles, and
electrical lines fell around them and water levels rose. Winds reached up to 130 mphxxiii, and
dumped almost 52 inches of rain.xxiv After the storm subsided, prisoners had to sit in floodwater
for multiple days, which carried harmful pathogens, petrochemicals, and debris. They were
potentially exposed to human and livestock waste, industrial hazardous waste of chemical,

18

biological and radiological nature, as well as carcinogenic compounds, all of which were found
in the flood waters during this period.xxv According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, exposure to flood water can cause skin rashes, wound infections, gastrointestinal
illness, boils, and burning of eyes.xxvi Furthermore, prisoners had little to no access to medicine,
clean drinking water or food amid these circumstances. Authorities refused to relocate 1,800
people even when drinking water was compromised, food was running concerningly low,
sewage had greatly overflowed, and facilities had lost power.xxvii Facility managers showed no
remorse for inmates who suffered these conditions. In fact, correctional facilities misled the
public into believing they were perfectly equipped to evacuate and care for them. Bureau of
Prison officials posted pictures of staff handing out bottles of water to inmates during the
evacuation periods. However, the employees pictured had not worked at these facilities in
years. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice also shared photos of gyms containing excess
cots for evacuated prisoners, implying that supplies and basic necessities were in abundance.
In fact, inmates were sleeping on the ground.xxviii Interestingly, these inmates were the same
ones who were forced to fill sandbags to brace the floodwaters days before.xxix Despite
participating in prevention and damage mitigation efforts, inmates saw neither respite nor
mercy. Not only were they participating in this labor, but they were given no choice. xxx
Hurricane Irma in 2017 exemplifies nearly identical themes. Incarcerated people in
Georgia and South Carolina facilities were ordered to participate in both preparation and
recovery efforts. 31 prisons that were not evacuated faced conditions comparable to Hurricane
Harvey.xxxi Following the storm, the Georgia Department of Corrections recruited prisoner work
crews to aid in the removal of hurricane-related debris. Similarly, the Florida Department of
Corrections sent approximately 180 work squads of 5 to 10 inmates to clean up hazardous
material in Florida for no pay.xxxii Incarcerated persons were sent to multiple locations across
Florida, including Dixie, Gilchrist and Franklin Counties as well as the city of Avon Park.xxxiii

19

Wildfires
Prison labor is also widely utilized to combat the ever-growing wildfires that rage every
year, especially in California. As of 2016, at least 10 other states use incarcerated people as
firefighters, and the system in California one of the most extensive.xxxiv There are 43
“conservation camps,” which, according to the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (CDCR), “provide able-bodied inmates the opportunity to work on meaningful
projects throughout the state.” Moreover, CALFIRE crews recruit inmates via the partnership
between the CDCR and the
California Department of Forestry
and Fire Protection.xxxv In total, over
4,000 inmates participate in this
program, making up about 30-40%
of the state’s forest fighters.xxxvi
These incarcerated people play a
huge role in mitigating damage
from wildfires in California, and they

Photo 1: Inmates fight California fires. By David McNew.

make considerable sacrifices in doing so. Most of the time, crews stand ready and are
responsible for maintaining and protecting about 33 million acres of state and private lands.
CALFIRE responds to 350,000 emergencies a year. In 2017, some inmates worked shifts up to
72 hours straight to protect properties of evacuated people.xxxvii Furthermore, detainees who
do this work generally face disproportionate danger in comparison to their civilian
counterparts. That is because civilian firefighters are mostly stationed further from the flames,
doing activities like driving water trucks and flying helicopters. Meanwhile, inmates are usually
at the front lines since they are specifically trained to cut firebreaks (trenches or other spaces
cleared of combustible material) or to halt and/or redirect flames. Examples of prisoners who
have been hurt on the job are Frank Anaya, 22, who was fatally wounded by a chainsaw, and
Matthew Beck, 26, who was crushed by a falling tree. Inmates regularly work 24 hour shifts for
no pensions, no workers’ compensation, and no guaranteed promise of future employment.xxxviii
This is especially unethical considering that, according to the CDCR, imprisoned firefighters

20

save state taxpayers about $100 million annually, which would have been spent on civilian
firefighter wages.xxxix Yet, they are paid $2-5 daily, with an additional $1 per hour when they are
in contact with a fire.xl Conservation camps do provide firefighter training to their inmates, yet it
can be as little as 3 weeks compared to 3 years required of non-incarcerated firefighters. In the
summer of 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsome signed bill 2147, which will allow some
former prisoners to have their felony convictions expunged, which will remove a major barrier
to their ability to become civilian firefighters.xli

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
As illustrated by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and the California wildfires, inmate labor is
utilized pre-, post- and during natural disasters. However, work involving contact with
hazardous contaminants and other environmental threats is not limited to events such as
hurricanes and wildfires; it can also be utilized as a result of direct human error in industrial and
technological disasters. In April of 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico
resulted in devastating effects on humans and wildlife alike. The whole world watched as our
oceans turned black and, for months, we wondered “How are they going to clean this up?”
The answer, in part, was with prison labor. Louisiana inmates were quickly recruited for cleanup
efforts, and sent out to sites with scarlet pants and t-shirts labeled with the descriptor “Inmate
Labor.” Local residents, many of whom had recently lost their sources of income to the spill
(e.g., in the seafood industry), expressed desire to fill these jobs as well as outrage that BP had
outsourced instead of considering them first. After that story hit the news, inmate attire was

Photo 3: BP Using Prison Labor in Oil Spill Cleanup.
By Prison Watch Network.

Photo 2: BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While
Coastal Residents Struggle. By Golden Age of Gaia.

21

changed to be more discreet: oil-resistant coveralls and shirts with the BP logo. Inmates were
transported in unmarked white vehicles between the site and the Lafourche Parish Work
Release Center (LPWRC). BP then claimed that they “didn’t know” if prisoners were still being
used for cleanup. Despite these efforts to divert attention from inmate labor, it should be
noted that 70% of Louisiana’s prisoners are Black, as were the majority of workers on the site,
while 90% of the local coastal residents were white. Nevertheless, BP policy prevented the
inmates from speaking publicly about their work.xlii
Crews worked 12 hours a day, and were exposed to noxious, toxic oil fumes during that
time. The coveralls were made up of high-density polyethylene taped to their plastic-covered
steel-toed boots.xliii Exposure to crude oil spills has been linked to a variety of medical
conditions, including hematopoietic, hepatic, renal and pulmonary abnormalities. In a 2014
study, 117 subjects who were exposed to the oil spill were examined and more than 70% had
creatinine levels near the upper limit of normal range while 23% had levels higher than the
threshold. Moreover, hemoglobin and hematocrit levels were found at the upper limit of
normal in over two thirds of the subjects. This suggests that those who participated in the
cleanup were at higher risk of developing alterations in liver function and hematological profile
(blood, blood proteins and blood-producing organs).xliv Because the US inmate population is
disproportionately made up of people of color, especially Black people, when companies like
BP use their labor to clean up environmental hazards, this inherently becomes an issue of
environmental justice.
Despite having eager workers ready and requesting to fill these positions, BP chose to
use inmate labor instead for a large part of its oil-spill cleanup response. In addition to the
benefit of not having to pay inmates minimum wage, or having to provide them with proper
protective equipment, BP was able to secure government-funded recompensation for hiring
“local labor.” This financial allocation was made possible by President George W. Bush’s
Welfare to Work legislation, which awards private-sector employers for hiring “risky groups” up
to $2,400 for every work release inmate hired. Additionally, companies can pocket up to 40%
of the wages paid to the “target group workers” annually.xlv This further highlights corporate

22

dependance on inmate labor and their willingness to subject people to hazardous conditions
for profit.

COVID-19
We demonstrate another example of the inmate experience with the COVID-19
pandemic, further highlighting how incarcerated folks are often the first to be tapped to meet
gaps in production. For example, at New York’s Great Meadow Correctional Facility, inmates
were recruited to manufacture hand sanitizer in order to meet the sudden and urgent demand
as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the nation. Inmate labor was also used to address
shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) for the state. Correctional facilities in
Indiana, Tennessee, and Washington also began manufacturing hand sanitizer in addition to
200 masks and gowns per day for law enforcement and first responder use.xlvi In Ohio, inmates
were charged with producing 2 million masks and over 40,000 gowns for the state’s facilities.xlvii
Furthermore, in accordance with the Pandemic Influenza Surge Plan For Managing In-and-Outof-Hospital Deaths in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that in case the city runs
out of refrigerator units to store unidentified bodies, they will be held at Hart Island, a
cemetery managed by the Department of Corrections. New York’s Rikers Island inmates have
been offered $6/hr to dig graves. xlviii
Some factories and workshops have even been repurposed to make materials to help
combat coronavirus in Louisiana, where inmates produced about 60,000 containers worth of
hand sanitizer at the beginning of the crisis.xlix In five facilities, inmates made over 74,000 cloth
face masks, 300 gowns, and over 1,200 face shields.l Wendy Matherene, mother of inmate
Jonathan West, says her son was recruited for a job in June of 2020 due to the shortage of
prison facility workers. Although he has severe mental health challenges and is on medication
that makes him drowsy, he is in charge of patrolling areas where inmates on suicide watch are
held. Now, he experiences shifts that last from 6pm to 6am with no notice. Ivy Mathis, who
spent 26 years at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, says her friends who remain
in custody are being “cycled through jobs they aren’t trained to take” in order to handle the
increased demand for a range of products needed during the pandemic.li In addition, inmates

23

in Oregon, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina participate in laundry services for hospitals,
hotels, and universities wherein they transport, sort, and wash potentially infectious gowns,
bedding, and linens. In Oregon, 75% of the laundry processed by the state’s correctional
industry service is for the state’s hospitals.lii Inmates aren’t only being asked to create PPE or
process hospital bedding to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning on November 16, 2020,
inmates from the El Paso County Jail in Texas had been hired at a rate of $2.00 an hour to
move the bodies of recently deceased COVID-19 patients from hospitals into refrigerated
“mobile morgues”.liii As we mentioned previously, Texas allows their inmates to be paid at a
rate of $0.00 an hour for their
labor. liv Though inmates
volunteered for this position,
the fact that this might be their
only opportunity to earn
money for their work while in
prison is an undeniable factor
in their decision to work.
Allowing inmates to work
without an hourly wage

Photo 4: Inmates move bodies as coronavirus deaths overwhelm El Paso
hospitals. By Ivan Aguirre.

reduces their agency to truly opt-in to paid work, and can place an undue burden where
inmates feel pressured into dangerous or uncomfortable work for money.
The myriad jobs inmates have been tasked with throughout the COVID-19 pandemic
re-emphasizes society’s readiness to exploit prison labor, while refusing to protect inmates
from the same disasters they are working to prevent, fight, or clean up. COVID-19 has claimed
many lives, but for months during 2020, activists and prisoners asked for the early release of
prisoners. These calls for early release were widely dismissed in the U.S., and those in power
squandered precious time to save lives. The inability to socially distance yourself from others in
prison is the greatest vulnerability prisoners face in the coronavirus pandemic. Coupled with
the widespread lack of protective equipment and decent medical care, this produced the
perfect conditions for prisons to become COVID-19 hotspots.lv Under massive public pressure,

24

many prisons instituted early release programs to reduce the spread of COVID-19, but only
after prisons became COVID-19 hotspots. lvi Inmates rely on their captors to care for them, and
time and again, prisoners have only been acknowledged when they provide a service to this
country. We argue that overcrowding, unsanitary facilities, and the inability to take precautions
to protect oneself from an airborne virus is an environmental justice issue.

Prison Labor in the Context of U.S. Capitalism

Louisiana State Penitentiary, more commonly known as Angola Prison, also
demonstrates patterns discussed earlier in this chapter. However, rather than considering
inequities and maltreatment within the context of a natural and/or human-caused disaster, this
case illustrates vulnerability on a daily basis. First, it is important to consider the historical
context. In fact, the name Angola Prison originated from the time that the territory was used to
host a number of plantations. It imprisoned so many slaves that it was labeled as a reference to
where these people were stolen from: Angola. The plantation was purchased in 1870 by
Confederate Major Samuel L. James, who transformed it into James Prison Camp and later
sold it back to the state in 1900.lvii It sits on 18,000 acres, which is roughly the size of
Manhattan, and holds more people serving life sentences than the prisons in the states of
Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas combined.lviii The facility is massive, and,
in addition to the inmate living quarters, consists of a cemetery, airstrip, museum, and
recreational facilities, including a swimming pool, tennis court, walking track, and even a golf
course--none of which are accessible to inmates. Additionally, the grounds contain livestock
and vast fields of crops such as cabbage, wheat, corn, soybeans, milo (sorghum) and cotton. lix
There are pecan and peach orchards, and even a crawfish pond.lx However, these food sources
are not there to feed the prisoners; they are there for inmates to harvest and sell to those on
the outside. For as little as 2 cents per hour, incarcerated people perform back-breaking labor
as guards patrol on horseback while carrying shotguns. Consider the origins of the prison, the
fact that the majority of employees are white,lxi and that inmates are punished if they refuse to
work. One might recognize the alarming echoes of chattel slavery and the abuses that are
inherent in that system of brutal exploitation. It is also important to recognize the harms

25

associated with agricultural work, including exposure to pesticides and extreme weather, as
well as exhaustion from repetitive motion, of which puts workers at risk.lxii The Louisiana State
Penitentiary has been criticized and sued for its mistreatment of inmates, not only related to its
harsh labor conditions, but also concerning violations of basic human rights like healthcare and
adequate shelter. Even during the pandemic, the safety and wellbeing of inmates held there
were not prioritized; detainees who tested positive for COVID-19 in other prisons across the
state were transferred to units at Angola, contributing to the possibility of a coronavirus
hotspot.lxiii Although this is only one particular case study, it illuminates the horrifying
conditions that are considered tolerable by the United States government.

Prison Labor in the Context of Global Capitalism

It is important to note that just as prison labor in the United States is inextricably linked
to the U.S.’ economy, so too is prison labor that takes place in other countries. Many goods
that U.S. consumers purchase are produced by prisoners in other countries. A glaring example
is in China, where prisoners are often forced to work in abysmal conditions, for incredibly long
hours, making goods that end up on the shelves of our stores. From Christmas cards and
Christmas lights, to pre-peeled garlic, to cigarette lighters, prisoners in China’s Laogai camps
manufacture goods that impact Western consumers in a variety of unexpected ways.lxiv Laogai,
the abbreviation for Láodòng Gǎizào, means “reform through labor.” Although these camps
have been condemned by international observers for many years, there are over 1,000 of these
facilities and they can be found in every major city in China.lxv There are currently an estimated
4 million detainees in Laogai camps, many of whom are forced to work in industries ranging
from agriculture, to mining, to manufacturing. Detainees have no formal sentencing nor a fixed
amount of time served. These people are forced to partake in brutal, and often lethal, work.
According to the Laogai Research Institute in Washington DC, upwards of 40 million people
have died as a result of living in these camps since 1950, a figure that exceeds the number who
died under Stalin’s Gulag and Hitler’s concentration camps combined. One Tibetan woman
who was imprisoned under this system recalled “[starvation] was so horrible that we began to
eat the leather from our shoes. Do you understand? We ate our shoes.”lxvi Harry Wu, a former

26

inmate, released footage of prisoners who were forced to produce textiles while naked.
Prisoners in these camps are regularly physically and mentally abused to a severe extent. Rape
and beatings occur on a nearly daily basis.lxvii
In Xinjiang, Muslim Uyghurs and other detainees endure similar conditions. People work
12-20 days with daily production quotas such as 3,000 cigarette lighter heads or 1,000
underwear garments. One former inmate said he worked so vigorously that his fingernails were
worn off and the skin of his fingertips had peeled off. This is not an uncommon phenomenon. A
common task that prisoners are forced to do is peeling garlic, with a quota of about 30-40
kilograms a day. According to former inmates, people often suffered losing their fingernails
and were forced to continue working. If prisoners were able to meet the quota, it would be
frequently increased. If prisoners did not meet their quota, they would be forced to work
overtime. One person said they weren’t even allowed to wipe away their sweat, let alone
stretch during their shifts.lxviii
Some jobs were not only laborious, but also dangerous in nature. One inmate said his
job was to apply glue to various products, and was never informed of the nature of the toxic
ingredients he worked with. However, he deduced that the glue was toxic because during
shifts his eyes were severely irritated and now he suffers from permanent damage to his eyes.
Another person was assigned to work in a brick kiln, where the temperatures could reach 140160 degrees Fahrenheit. This resulted in scalding wounds and hair scorching. Authorities do
not provide temperature resistant shoes, so inmates stand on one foot shifting from left to right
in order to minimize burns and blisters. Allegedly, new prisoners “couldn’t even last five
seconds before having to run out of the kiln. But whenever the manager saw someone running
out, he would flog them with a pipe.” Some workers even tried and failed to commit suicide
and were beaten with an electric baton as punishment.lxix The Chinese government relies so
heavily on the labor of detainees that products from the camps are even components of the
state’s economic plan.lxx The Chinese government values the economic benefits of this
exploited labor regardless of the fact that it results in clear violations of basic human rights.
Millions of those of us living in the West have intimate familiarity with the products of
these people’s suffering. The aforementioned garments and textiles, food, and cigarette

27

lighters, all end up on the shelves of stores all over the world where consumers shop without
thinking twice. In 2019, 6-year-old Florence Widdicombe of South London was writing notes to
her classmates on Christmas cards when she found that one contained a message from
prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu Prison in China begging for help.lxxi According to The
Independent, Chinese detainees also manufacture fairy lights, bulbs, and other festive
decorations for the global supply chain during the holiday season. After bidding on Christmas
decorations passes, production simply shifts to focus on other ornamentation for celebrations
like the Chinese New Year. lxxii
And while the U.S. has passed laws that aim to ban the importation of goods made
from prison labor, goods from Laogai camps end up in U.S. and Western consumer markets
regardless. In fact, freed prisoners from Laogai camps report that their captors would “openly
delight in the fact that the retail giants purchasing the goods had no idea of the circumstances
in which they’d been made.” Laogai camps are able to send manufactured goods to large
bidding locations where these products are then sold to buyers around the world.
Even though U.S. legislation exists that attempts to prevent goods produced by foreign
prison labor from entering our markets, oftentimes prisoners in the U.S. make goods explicitly
for sale within the U.S. For example, the United States Department of Justice even advertises
their inmate workforce to the private sector with marketing brochures flaunting its “costeffective labor pool” and “Native English and Spanish language skills.” Today, about 17,000
inmates in the U.S. work in more than 50 government factories, farms, and call centers.
UNICOR, the federal prison industry corporation in the U.S., brought in $300 million in total
government and private-sector sales in 2018, according to their midyear sales report.lxxiii Yet,
these same facilities do not allocate the resources necessary to provide adequate healthcare or
even safely evacuate inmates when a Category 5 hurricane is heading their way. Even
supposedly ethical industries held in high regard are implicated. SolarCity, one of the largest
solar power companies in the U.S., leases labor through UNICOR. Inmates at the Federal
Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Oregon are being paid $0.93 cents hourly by UNICOR to
manufacture solar panels.lxxiv

28

Summary and Next Steps

From the case studies presented here, we find that prison labor is utilized in a wide
variety of contexts and purposes. We divide the work of incarcerated populations into two
primary categories: 1) protection of non-incarcerated folks from hazards both directly and
indirectly tied to human error and 2) providing luxury and convenience to consumers. Whether
it is in defense from fires, oil spills and global pandemics, or affordable yet stylish new shoes
and brand-new energy-efficient solar panels, it is fair to say that at least some aspect of our
lives is tied to incarcerated labor. Thus, it is our responsibility to be informed and consider this
system that we coexist with and provide taxpayer support for.
While we as individual readers may not have the ability to single handedly reform the
world’s economic dependence on prison labor, there is significant work we can do. We can
demand basic human rights for all, especially for those who put their lives on the line to protect
us. It is abhorrent that BP created the largest oil spill in U.S. history, used prison labor to clean
up the mess, and received a government tax break for hiring “local labor.” It is horrific that
prisoners are asked to make PPE to keep us safe from a global pandemic, but left in close
contact with each other when there were known cases of COVID-19 in many prisons. If
incarcerated people are going to continue serving as key workers in society, they should be
entitled to protections for doing so. This goes beyond sufficient access to food, clean water
and air, and basic medical care. We propose a shift in legislation that would grant prisoners
access to the same workers’ rights that free people have, including the right to safe working
conditions, the right to earn the federal minimum wage for their labor, and, perhaps most
critically, the right to decline work that they feel is too dangerous to perform. We also demand
the mandated inclusion of prisons in formal emergency planning. Additionally, it is in
everyone’s best interest to have transparency. Consumers deserve to know whether the
products they are purchasing were made using prison labor. Change is possible, because in
September of 2020, California passed AB 2147, a bill that gives former inmates the opportunity
to pursue careers as firefighters after their release. Previously, those who worked as firefighters
while incarcerated were barred from entering the same workforce once released because of
many barriers, despite the fact that inmates have been deployed to fight fires since World War

29

II.lxxv While there was an internal desire for the state of California to increase its firefighting
force as a result of prisoner early release due to COVID-19, and the worst fire season in
California’s history, this is still an example of a right being restored to formerly incarcerated
folks. It shows that, with the right conditions and significant public pressure, we can demand
and realize change.
Finally, if we are outraged at the injustices that occur in prisons built on US soil, we
cannot neglect the same systems that exist elsewhere. We have to consider prison labor
outside of the US because those incarcerated persons make many products that U.S. residents
consume and rely upon. These products include cotton,lxxvi peeled garlic, cigarette lighter
heads, and undergarments, underscoring that the fruits of international inmate labor are not as
distant from the average American consumer as one might assume.lxxvii
Perhaps in recognizing our reliance on the suffering and hardships of imprisoned
people, we can find the motivation to dignify their work and existence not just because it is
economically beneficial or convenient, but because it is the right thing to do. It is apparent that
the United States economy, among others, utilizes the vulnerable population of prisoners to fill
gaps in production and to maximize monetary benefits for big businesses. In doing so, they
have successfully manipulated the majority of its citizens into being largely unaware of the
blatant abuses of inmates’ environmental and human rights. Incarcerated folks are forced to
put themselves at risk for us, while we leave them with few to no protections when faced with
the same crises. Similarly, we utilize incarcerated labor for a range of everyday consumer
goods. In either situation, we are complicit in a system that exploits people who legally cannot
opt out and who do not have a shred of the protections most of us are afforded daily. That is
atrocious and it must change. We can ensure that we listen to prisoners speaking up about
their conditions and support their demands for better treatment. Finally, many advocates will
point out that a particularly effective way to address the violence and brutality of imprisoned
labor would be to implement policies of wide scale decarceration, decriminalization, and
abolition. In a world without prisons, there would be no prison labor, and we could then focus
our energies on the spectrum of other existing forms of labor exploitation.

30

i

Smith, “Inmate Populations in a Disaster: A Labor Force, a Vulnerable Population, and a Hazard.”
Smith.
iii
The Sentencing Project, “Report to United Nations-- Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States
Criminal Justice System.”
iv
Benns, “‘Free’ Labor.”
v
Benns, “American Slavery, Reinvented.”
vi
Benns.
vii
Benns; Smith, “Inmate Populations in a Disaster: A Labor Force, a Vulnerable Population, and a
Hazard.”
viii
Smith, “Inmate Populations in a Disaster: A Labor Force, a Vulnerable Population, and a Hazard.”
ix
Sawyer, “How Much Do Incarcerated People Earn in Each State?”
x
Smith, “Inmate Populations in a Disaster: A Labor Force, a Vulnerable Population, and a Hazard.”
xi
Wright, “From PPE to Hospital Laundry, COVID-19 Outbreak Exposes America’s Dependence on
Incarcerated Labor.”
xii
Benns, “American Slavery, Reinvented.”
xiii
Sandweg and Salas, Former ICE Director.
xiv
Law, “Opinion | End Forced Labor in Immigrant Detention - The New York Times.”
xv
Law.
xvi
Takei, “The U.S. Government Treats Detained Immigrants Like Slaves.”
xvii
Law, “Opinion | End Forced Labor in Immigrant Detention - The New York Times.”
xviii
Law.
xix
Law.
xx
Smith, “Inmate Populations in a Disaster: A Labor Force, a Vulnerable Population, and a Hazard.”
xxi
Savilonis, “Prisons and Disasters.”
xxii
Clarke, “In the Eye of the Storm: When Hurricanes Impact Prisons and Jails.” 2018.
xxiii
Brown-Giammanco, Giammanco, and Pogorzelski, “Hurricane Harvey Wind Damage Investigation.”
xxiv
Chen, “Tropical Storm Harvey Has Set a New Record for Rain in the Continental US.”
xxv
Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “Flood Waters or Standing Waters | Water, Sanitation, &
Hygiene-Related Emergencies & and Outbreaks | Healthy Water | CDC.”
xxvi
CNN, “The Hidden Health Dangers of Flooding.”
xxvii
Coleman, “Emergency Preparedness for Prisons Isn’t Just Sandbags and Non-Perishables.”
xxviii
Clarke, “In the Eye of the Storm: When Hurricanes Impact Prisons and Jails.” 2018.
xxix
Duncan, “Prison Labor in a Warming World.”
xxx
Duncan.
xxxi
Clarke, “In the Eye of the Storm: When Hurricanes Impact Prisons and Jails.” 2018.
xxxii
Clarke. 2018.
xxxiii
Lipscomb, “Unpaid Florida Prison Inmates Used on Hurricane Irma Cleanup Labor Crews | Miami
New Times.”
xxxiv
Smith, “Inmate Populations in a Disaster: A Labor Force, a Vulnerable Population, and a Hazard.”
xxxv
Smith.
xxxvi
Duncan, “Prison Labor in a Warming World.”
xxxvii
Neklason, “California Is Running Out of Inmates to Fight Its Fires.”
xxxviii
Sabalow and Pohl, “California Severely Short on Firefighting Crews after COVID-19 Lockdown at
Prison Camps.”
xxxix
Neklason, “California Is Running Out of Inmates to Fight Its Fires.”
xl
Sabalow and Pohl, “California Severely Short on Firefighting Crews after COVID-19 Lockdown at Prison
Camps.”
xli
Hartman, “California Law Will Allow Some Inmate Firefighters to Have Records Expunged.”
xlii
Young, “BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle.”
xliii
Young.
xliv
Chrostowski, Foster, and Anderson, “Human Health Risks Associated with Asbestos Abatement.”
xlv
Young, “BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle.”
xlvi
Wright, “From PPE to Hospital Laundry, COVID-19 Outbreak Exposes America’s Dependence on
Incarcerated Labor.”
xlvii
Wright.
ii

31

xlviii

Wright.
O’Donoghue, “Coronavirus Complicates Louisiana’s Use of Prison Labor.”
l
O’Donoghue.
li
O’Donoghue.
lii
Wright, “From PPE to Hospital Laundry, COVID-19 Outbreak Exposes America’s Dependence on
Incarcerated Labor.”
liii
Ockerman, “Prisoners Are Loading COVID Victims Into Mobile Morgues for $2 an Hour in Texas.”
liv
Sawyer, “How Much Do Incarcerated People Earn in Each State?”
lv
“A State-by-State Look at Coronavirus in Prisons.”
lvi
“A State-by-State Look at Coronavirus in Prisons”; ABC7.com staff, “ACLU Sues over Terminal Island,
Lompoc Prison Conditions That Let COVID-19 Spread”; Sandweg and Salas, Former ICE Director.
lvii
“History of Angola.”
lviii
Davis IIa, “Voices of the Formerly Incarcerated, Part Two- Angola Prison’s Racist History.”
lix
UsborneDavid, “Angola Penitentiary Prison Farm”; Layton, “Angola Prison and the Ethics of Prison
Labor.”
lx
Davis IIa, “Voices of the Formerly Incarcerated, Part Two- Angola Prison’s Racist History.”
lxi
Layton, “Angola Prison and the Ethics of Prison Labor.”
lxii
McCray, “A Disturbing Trend in Agriculture.”
lxiii
Chrastil, “Lawsuit Filings Reveal New Details about Use of Angola Facility to House Coronavirus
Patients.”
lxiv
Wamsley, “6-Year-Old Finds Message Alleging Chinese Prison Labor In Box Of Christmas Cards.”
lxv
Cox, “How Inmates in Chinese Prisons Are Forced to Make the World’s Christmas Decorations.”
lxvi
Laogai - Forced Labor in Chinas Gulag’s. Short Clip 2.
lxvii
Laogai - Forced Labor in Chinas Gulag’s. Short Clip 2.
lxviii
Laogai - Forced Labor in Chinas Gulag’s. Short Clip 2.
lxix
Lu, “Profiting from Persecution.”
lxx
Laogai - Forced Labor in Chinas Gulag’s. Short Clip 2.
lxxi
Wamsley, “6-Year-Old Finds Message Alleging Chinese Prison Labor In Box Of Christmas Cards.”
lxxii
Cox, “How Inmates in Chinese Prisons Are Forced to Make the World’s Christmas Decorations.”
lxxiii
Campbell, “The Federal Government Markets Prison Labor to Businesses as the ‘Best-Kept Secret.’”
lxxiv
Tsolkas, “One of the Largest Solar Power Companies in the U.S. Has Ties to Prison Slave Labor |
Prison Legal News.”
lxxv
Schuster, “CA Passes Bill Allowing Former Inmates To Become Firefighters.”
lxxvi
Layton, “Angola Prison and the Ethics of Prison Labor.”
lxxvii
Layton; Lu, “Profiting from Persecution.”
xlix

Photos, Graphics and Figures:
Title-page Photo: Inmate firefighters walk along Highway 120. By Jae C. Hong.
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2017/dec/13/prison-reforms-pressuring-californias-inmate-firef/
Photo 1: David McNew. Inmates fight California fires. 'Slave labor' or self-improvement? 20 October 2017.
Photo.https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-how-much-are-california-inmatefirefighters-paid-to-fight-wildfiresPhoto 2: Prison Watch Network. BP Using Prison Labor in Oil Spill Cleanup. 29 July 2010. Photo.
https://prisonwatchnetwork.org/2010/07/29/bp-using-prison-labor-in-oil-spill-cleanup/
Photo 3: Golden Age of Gaia. BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle. 24 July
2010. Photo. https://goldenageofgaia.com/2010/07/25/bp-hires-prison-labor-to-clean-up-spill-while-coastalresidents-struggle/
Photo 4: Ivan Aguirre. Inmates move bodies as coronavirus deaths overwhelm El Paso hospitals. 14 November
2020. Photo.https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/inmates-move-bodies-as-coronavirus-death-idUSRTX89XPQ

32

“The Water was black”:
The Fight for Clean Water in U.S.
Prisons and Jails

By: David N. Pellow

33

“The water was black. Most of the time it was black.” Benjamin served time at Deuel
Vocational Institution, near Tracy, California. During his time there he recalled, “I couldn’t drink
water so I couldn’t hydrate myself, so I lost a lot of weight.”i His experience is reflective of a
disturbing trend in carceral facilities throughout the U.S. In 2007, Prison Legal News—the
publication with the largest circulation in U.S. prisons—released a major report on water quality
in the nation’s carceral facilities. It stated,

“Aging infrastructure concerns are not limited to America’s highways,
bridges and dams. Today, crumbling, overcrowded prisons and jails nationwide
are bursting at the seams -- literally -- leaking environmentally dangerous
effluents not just inside prisons, but also into local rivers, water tables and
community water supplies. Because prisons are inherently detested and ignored
institutions, the hidden menace of pollution from them has stayed below the
radar.”ii

The living conditions and the built environment in prisons and jails across the U.S. are
often dangerous, filthy, toxic, and life-threatening. Toxic water is a routine threat facing
persons incarcerated in the U.S. If “water is life” then the fact that it is difficult to find a jail or
prison in the U.S. without contaminated water highlights the reality that the carceral system is,
at minimum, a space of constant threats to health and wellbeing, and at its worst, a site of
death and ecocide. And while there is a spectrum of environmental health threats facing
incarcerated persons, in my research it is clear that water quality is one of the most frequently
cited risks, a conclusion supported by other researchers studying the violation of federal
environmental laws in prisons.iii This chapter features cases that reflect the depths of water
justice struggles in prisons and jails in the U.S. The bottom line is that prisons and jails are
inherently unsafe, unhealthy, and environmentally unjust. The problem of water contamination
also reflects the incarceration-extraction nexus, as imprisoned people siphoned out of their
communities into cages are exposed to water that has been injected with toxins and extracted
from rivers, aquifers, and other sources and imposed on the bodies of the juridically enslaved.

34

This multiply-layered violence also represents an opportunity for people of conscience to
locate points of vulnerability within the carceral system through which to resist and, eventually,
to unmake it.

Charleston, West Virginia: South Central Jail

“We (the inmates) have been forced to drink MCHM contaminated water, survive staff’s
excessive force & constant neglect, and deal with constant hunger due to insufficient food
services…We are human beings and we really deserve to be treated like it.” These words
appeared in a petition authored by Eric Ayers, who served time at the South Central Regional
Jail, an overcrowded facility in Charleston, West Virginia. That jail was the site of a major
environmental justice struggle that stemmed from a toxic threat entering the jail from an
external industrial polluting source.
On January 9, 2014, between 7,500 and 10,000 gallons of toxic MCHM leaked from a
faulty storage tank at Freedom Industries into the ground, which, in turn, leaked into the Elk
River, a tributary of the Kanawha River. The chemical spill reached the intake pipe of West
Virginia American
Water—the public
utility that treats and
distributes water to
the region. When its
carbon filtration
system was
overwhelmed by the
enormous volume
of toxic chemicals

Photo 1: Satelite view of South Central Regional Jail and Correctional Facility. Photo by
Inmaid Aid.

that afternoon, West Virginia American Water contacted its customers and instructed them to
cease using their tap water.iv West Virginia’s Governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, responded with a
declaration of a state of emergency, which was followed by school closings, the deployment of
the National Guard, and numerous volunteers mobilizing to deliver bottled water to some

35

300,000 residents across nine counties who were impacted. Area businesses and even the
West Virginia state legislature shut down. On President Barack Obama’s orders, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security delivered
nearly 400,000 gallons of drinking water to the residents.v That was an impressive effort, but it
left out one particular population: the more than 400 inmates in the South Central Jail, who
had no way of accessing clean water during this crisis.
Joe DeLong, director of the West Virginia Regional Jail Authority, told journalists that
inmates at the jail were completely protected from the toxic water because the staff allegedly
provided them with eight bottles of water per day during the “do-not-use” period, so that
inmates had “essentially no access to the contaminated water.”vi These claims were later
proven false. The “do-not-use” order issued by the government was lifted after five days.
MCHM is more properly known as 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol and, in its crude form,
is a chemical used to process coal to remove some impurities that contribute to pollution when
combusted. In other words, the roots of this crisis and industrial accident are linked to the
extraction and burning of coal, which contributes directly to global climate change and
disruption. Freedom Industries stores and distributes chemicals to other companies that
process coal. Nearly two weeks after the spill, Freedom Industries informed authorities that a
second chemical—polyglycol ethers (PPH)—was also in the leaking tank. PPH is a solvent
commonly used in paint products. According to several sources, MCHM can cause nausea,
vomiting, dizziness, headaches, diarrhea, burning and irritated skin and eyes, itching, rashes,
and difficulty breathing.vii The day of the spill, many residents reported a sweet, licorice-like
odor emanating from the Elk River and their tap water. In the wake of the spill, more than one
hundred people were hospitalized, seeking treatment for nausea and vomiting, and several
died.viii
To the relief of many, no fish kills were reported after the spill, which was a concern
because the Elk River is the last remaining habitat for the diamond darter, a fish on the
endangered species list.ix The Freedom Industries leak was the third major chemical accident to
occur in the Kanawha Valley in a period of just five years—the other two being at Bayer
CropScience and DuPont.x This region is also known as “Chemical Valley” because of the

36

density of industries in the area that focus on the processing and production of toxic chemicals.
Going further back into history, we find that the Chemical Valley area is also home to two
infamous examples of environmental injustice: the drilling of the Hawks Nest tunnel in Gauley
Bridge, West Virginia (just a few miles from Charleston), in the early 1930s, which killed
hundreds of workers who succumbed to silicosis as a result, with the heaviest death toll on
migrant Black workers, in what scholars have called American’s worst industrial disasterxi; and a
massive chemical leak at a Union Carbide plant in the working class town of Institute, West
Virginia (less than an hour’s drive from Charleston) in 1985, which involved the release of a
cloud of methyl isocyanate (MIC), the same chemical that killed 2,000 people the year before in
the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India.xii
An investigation by the media outlet ThinkProgress found that inmates reported being
given only as much as 16 oz. of water each day, which meant that they had to use
contaminated tap water in order to have enough water for drinking, face washing, and teeth
brushing. Perry Changes, a former inmate who was at the jail at the time, remembered, “We
got three 8 oz. jugs of water a day. I don’t think that’s enough water. We thought we was
going to pass out.”xiii Inmates had a simple but horrifying choice: they could drink the toxic
water and likely get sick, or face the pain of dehydration. Perry Changes chose the latter for
much of the time and recalled, “My head hurt like a hangover for days.”
Moreover, many of the inmates indicated that they were experiencing health problems
that occurred after they were exposed to the MCHM-laced water, including skin rashes,
respiratory infections, and fainting.xiv Jason Clendenin was an inmate at the time who wrote the
following in a letter to the activist group West Virginia Water Hub: “After water was turned on, I
had to go to the medical unit because I felt pain in my liver. The medical unit took a blood test,
but I never got the results back….A couple of days later I was standing in the chow line, and
got dizzy and got lost eyesight. A guy behind me caught me when I fell.”xv Inmate Eric Ayers—
the author of the above-quoted inmate petition at the jail—told ThinkProgress that during the
period when water contamination was evident, “I was just extremely exhausted…I got
headaches, felt like I couldn’t do anything. My urine was dark yellow, almost orange.”xvi

37

In a chilling development, inmates described a jail policy put in place the month after
the chemical spill (in February 2014), declaring that any inmates asking for medical attention
more than three times per month would be placed in medical isolation until a doctor was
available; and if there were no empty beds there, they would be sent to solitary confinement—
which many activists believe was a clear human rights violation. Since the water inside and
outside the jail was contaminated, there were negative impacts on human health on both sides
of the facility. Area hospitals reported an increase in emergency room visits and a survey by the
Kanawha Charleston Health Department estimated that nearly 1 in 3 affected residents (as
many as 100,000 persons) experienced negative health impacts.xvii
Inmates responded with desperation and creativity. Prisoner Michael Moss told ThinkProgress,
“I saw a guy make coffee out of toilet water.” Others decided they had enough and resisted
through other means. For example, as noted earlier, inmate Eric Ayers penned a petition that
was signed by some two dozen of his fellow inmates. Moreover, at least two “pods” of
prisoners staged a protest in order to demand sufficient water immediately following the spill.
Michael Moss was one of many inmates who refused to return to his cell for the nightly
lockdown one evening. “We told them, ‘we just want water’…They told us to get back in our
cell and we could talk about it.” The following day, he and the others were put in “the hole”
for “inciting a riot” and “obstruction.”xviii
A community-based prisoner support initiative called The Stories from South Central
Project, reported that, according to at least five eyewitnesses, around a dozen inmates
participated in the strike to demand access to clean water. The strikers were lying down
peacefully with their hands over their heads. Prison officials responded by placing several of
them in solitary confinement for fifteen days or more. Danny Vorbach, a 68 year-old Vietnam
veteran, served as a negotiator with the guards on behalf of the inmates. According to this
report, a shift supervisor pushed him down several stairs in retaliation for his role in supporting
the strike, which broke his dentures. He was also punished with a month in solitary confinement
and a write up for Failure to Obey.

38

Tyler Roy was one of the strikers and described his experience in a letter to supporters:
“[M]yself and several other inmates started asking employees for water to drink. We
also needed it for brushing our teeth, and normal everyday hygiene. They then refused to give
us any water. We asked for their supervisor thinking he could help our situation. But the same
thing occurred. NO WATER. We then sat down on the floor, and asked for water. The EXACT
WORDS were ‘We don’t want any trouble, we just need water.’ They summoned at least 20 to
30 officers to make us lock in our cells. After a few moments we did so. The next day a shift
supervisor and couple officers came and moved 6 of us out. They put us in the ‘Hole,’ and
claimed we had started a riot.”xix
Many inmates filed formal grievances but never received responses from jail authorities.
A number of inmates’ family members called the jail demanding information and
improvements to their situation, but few felt the jail’s leadership responded adequately. Phyllis
Johnson’s son Jamaa was incarcerated in the jail at the time and she was horrified at the way
the authorities responded: “I didn’t know human beings could treat other human beings like
that.”xx
Given the clear neglect of prisoners at the South Central Jail, a group of community
volunteers from two groups—West Virginia Clean Water Hub and Radical Action for Mountains’
and People’s Survival (RAMPS)—mobilized and visited at least 50 inmates there. They recorded
their stories regarding the conditions in the facility after the spill and reported that the majority
of inmates they spoke with indicated illness and other health symptoms that arose in the wake
of the chemical spill, including:
•

headaches/migraines

•

dehydration

•

vomiting and diarrhea

•

respiratory problems

•

rashes, bumps, and other skin conditions

•

back pain, stomach pain/nausea, intestinal pain, and organ pain

•

spikes in temperature (up to 105 degrees)

•

tooth pain, burning gums and throat, oral blisters, jaw and lip abrasions

39

•

blurry vision and eye irritation

•

fainting

•

swollen joints

•

weight lossxxi

Roberta Stewart was an inmate at the jail who reported experiencing irritated, red, and
itching eyes, as well as major dental problems like a disintegrating crown and enamel coming
off her teeth. She filled out a third medical request and was placed in isolation for eight days
per the punitive policy noted above. During that period, she received no medical attention.
Another inmate, Johnie Mason, asked for medical care to attend to the blisters and abrasions
in his mouth. Nurses told him that the problem was “in his head,” but upon being transferred
to another facility (Salem Correctional Center), Mason was diagnosed as having oral blisters
and abrasions on his jaw “caused by the chemical spill.”xxii
In a collective letter written by several inmates at the jail, they argued, “We contend
that issues arising from the chemical spill are indicative of a larger pattern of violence, abuse,
and negligence in South Central Regional Jail that has been systematically perpetrated and
tolerated by jail staff and administration since long before January 2014.” That list of alleged
violations included: inadequate medical care; a new policy of prohibiting contact with spouses,
children, and loved ones during “contact” visits; lack of access to clean showers (in violation of
jail policy); overcrowding, which resulted in inmates being forced to sleep on the floor (in
violation of jail policy); lack of educational and rehabilitative opportunities; lack of proper
nutrition and the failure to meet the needs of inmates’ medical and religious dietary
restrictions; a pattern of beatings and excessive force against inmates perpetrated by
correctional officers; and the perpetration of racial discrimination—including acts of physical
violence—by correctional officers, that specifically target Black inmates. The letter included a
series of demands that would address each of these issues, including third party water testing,
provision of adequate and universal medical care for the inmates, dismissal of all charges
against those who participated in the peaceful strike, and a public acknowledgement of the
government’s failure to provide inmates with clean water during the chemical leak crisis.

40

Nearly three years after the Freedom Industries MCHM leak, a number of lawsuits were
settled. Gary Southern, the executive of Freedom Industries, paid a fine of $20,000 and agreed
to serve one month of jail time, after a court found that the company was negligent in
maintaining its storage tanks and that the spill was “completely preventable.” His company,
Freedom Industries, filed for bankruptcy one day after the spill occurred, and was therefore
able to avoid legal liability for the accident. Thomas Johnston, the judge presiding over the
case in a U.S. District Court in Charleston, West Virginia, argued that Southern’s actions were
negligent rather than criminal: “The defendant is hardly a criminal…He has no criminal history
and has been a businessman most of his life. His crimes are those of careless omission.”xxiii
Maya Nye, an activist with the West Virginia-based group People Concerned About Chemical
Safety, echoed many others who were furious at this decision. She stated, “That shows you the
difference between when poor communities or communities of color are affected and when
communities with more wealth and more political clout are affected.” True to its politically
conservative roots, the state legislature of West Virginia passed a law immediately after the
2014 accident that required increased monitoring and enforcement of safety protocols for
above-ground chemical storage tanks, and then promptly passed another law the following
year exempting most tanks from that oversight.xxiv In November of 2016, a federal judge
approved a settlement of $151 million that two companies—Eastman Chemical and West
Virginia American Water Company—were to pay to the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit
involving 224,000 residents of West Virginia and 7,300 local businesses affected by the
Freedom Industries chemical spill of 2014. The judge ruled that Eastman failed in its duty to
inform Freedom Industries that MCHM is corrosive and would likely eat through the storage
tanks, and that the water company engaged in a breach of duty because it delivered poisoned
water to its customers.xxv South Central Jail inmates as a class were not included in these
settlements.

Immigrant Prisons and Water Contamination

Many prisons are located on or near current and former waste dumps and toxic waste
sites, which can place inmates’ health at risk from toxic water and air exposure. For example, the

41

largest immigrant prison in the nation is in Dilley, Texas, a place often called “the waste
epicenter” of the Eagle Ford Shale, a 30-county region where 20 saltwater disposal wells pump
fracked wastewater back into the ground.xxvi The Karnes County Civil Detention Center is another
immigrant prison in the region and has been described as the “drilling epicenter” of the Eagle
Ford Shale, a region with several well blowouts, local evacuations, and the majority of residents
reporting major environmental health problems. The water at the prison is heavily chlorinated
and immigrant prisoners report that it smells and tastes foul.xxvii As is the case at many immigrant
prisons around the nation, inmates routinely resist through hunger strikes, sit-ins, and other
means of protest and defiance against this brutal system.
In March of 2015, at least 78 immigrant women and mothers imprisoned at the Karnes
County Residential Center began a hunger strike to demand their release and the release of their
children. This action was a response to the increasing incarceration by the federal government
of undocumented persons and families seeking asylum from dangerous conditions in Mexico
and Central America. This action was also a response to the horrific conditions within the Karnes
immigration prison, with a particular emphasis on the problem of contaminated water there.
Immigrant prisoners do have the option of buying bottled water from the facility, but at $2.50
per bottle that is considered quite costly for many migrants who have come to the U.S. with not
much more than the clothes on their backs. The Karnes prison is run by the GEO group, the
nation’s largest for-profit prison company, which has been accused of a long list of abusive
practices directed at prisoners across the nation.xxviii
Karnes County is in the midst of an oil and gas boom made possible by innovations in
hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fracking involves injecting massive volumes of water and toxic
chemicals into underground shale formations to access previously unreachable deposits of
natural gas or petroleum, and is associated with a range of environmental and public health
harms.xxix There are more than 2,000 wells siphoning fossil fuels from the ground in the area,
using a cocktail of chemicals that are associated with health problems like brain damage,
cancer, and respiratory disorders. The Karnes County Residential Center is within one hundred
feet of many gas flares and pumpjack oil wells, which emit toxic fumes. Priscilla Villa is an
activist and organizer with the NGO Earthworks, which seeks to address and reduce the

42

hazards from coal, oil, and gas extraction. She noted that, unlike free residents on the other
side of the prison walls, “The prisoners have no choice but to inhale the toxic fumes coming
from these sites.”xxx Scientists have documented the fact that environmental toxicants from
fracking are deeply harmful to human health, and even more so for young children and
expectant mothers, producing neurological development disorders.xxxi
The Southwest Workers’ Union is a Texas-based NGO that organizes grassroots social
change movements at the intersections of immigration, race, gender, citizenship, labor, and
environmental justice, and issued a statement of solidarity for the hunger strikers, which read in
part:

Southwest Workers’ Union (SWU) stands in solidarity with the 78 mujeres,
and mothers at Karnes County Residential Center in Texas…As a migrante
community, it is our responsibility to support the mujeres who are committing
their minds, and bodies for justice for their families in the borderland. The unfair
actions partaken by ICE, GEO Group, and Karnes City are the perpetual
behavior of anti-immigration, environmental racism, sexism, and classism from a
capitalistic state…Texas has a track record of exploitation, therefore women, like
the environment, are seen as a form of profit. Karnes City, located on the Eagle
Ford Shale, is one of the largest sites of Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) in the US
and home to many acts of environmental destruction. The proximity of the
detention center to the extraction sites is a threat to the health of the
incarcerated children along with their mothers. The cumulative effects of being
exposed to contaminated air and water is known to cause short and long term
health problems such as respiratory issues, reproductive illness, and cancer. The
compañeras refuse to consume the water provided by the center because of
health concerns yet both ICE and GEO Group continue to deny the access to
fresh, clean water. SWU views the denial of basic human necessities such as safe
housing and fresh water and air as acts of violence against womyn and
children.”xxxii

_J
43

The SWU points to the ways in which the Karnes facility reveals the intersections of
nativism, patriarchy, racism, and environmental injustice, because it is located on land at the
epicenter of hydraulic fracturing, which has been documented as an environmental and public
health hazard and contributor to climate change. They are serving as allies in support of the
prison EJ movement (which is, of course, inseparable from the immigrant justice movement in
this case), and denounce the violence of racial capitalism as well.
Hunger strikes have long been a common form of resistance in prisons. They are of great
symbolic and material significance because they signal the inmates’ refusal to allow authorities
provide them with basic sustenance, which amounts to a refusal of the management’s basic
authority. Hunger strikes are important because in the context of a total institution in which one’s
bodily movements and bodily functions are controlled by the jailers, incarcerated persons are
asserting sovereignty over their corporeality. What this fundamentally means is that prisoners are
engaged in actions that have implications for environmental justice, climate justice, and food
justice because they are confronting a violent industrial water and food delivery system that
produces harm to humans and ecosystems.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that growth in U.S. oil production will
meet 80% of new global demand for oil in the coming years, with much of that growth coming
directly from oil produced by fracking in Texas.xxxiii Thus international migrants, refugees, and
asylum seekers are caged, with children often separated from their families, and placed at great
risk of exposure to contaminated water as an indirect result of repressive, militaristic U.S. foreign
policies in Latin America as well as climate change-induced drought,xxxiv and the direct result of
the intersection of oppressive anti-immigrant policies and an intensified commitment to global
fossil fuel production, amplifying nativism and global climate injustice.
The recent context for much of this environmental justice struggle in immigrant prisons
is the amplification of racist and nativist policies of the U.S. federal government. The Trump
regime’s Zero Tolerance Policy prosecuted asylum seekers and people attempting to cross the
U.S. border without authorization, which also included an extraordinary development involving
caging children in prisons whom the government had separated from their families. And while

44

this policy produced an international outcry among attorneys and immigrant justice advocates,
by May of 2018, the Trump regime had already removed and separated more than 2,000
immigrant children from their families. The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned that
this kind of forceable separation can cause “irreversible harm” to children’s mental
wellbeing.xxxv Adding insult to injury, children as young as 18 months of age were held in
facilities where staff members were apparently instructed not to comfort or hold them even if
they were in distress. Moreover, a number of immigrant prisons reportedly forced children to
take antipsychotic drugs in order to sedate them.xxxvi
What has not received as much news coverage, however, is the fact that the U.S.
Department of Defense was actively seeking to house separated immigrant children on military
bases with known and documented water contamination; water contaminated with PFAS—a
family of man-made chemicals known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances.

Photo 2: Child Detainees at Karnes County Residential Center. Photo by Eric Gay.

The military uses these chemicals to put out fires during training exercises, and they are also
commonly used in non-stick pans and flame-retardant carpets. PFAS are part of a spectrum of
what scientists call “contaminants of emerging concern” because they are relatively new in
usage and their full range of environmental health effects is not entirely known, but they are
believed to have serious risks. What is known about PFAS is that they have been linked to

45

increased risk of thyroid, kidney, and liver disorders, infertility in women, various types of
cancers, and developmental abnormalities in infants and fetuses. Children are particularly
vulnerable to PFAS because exposure to these chemicals can reduce the body’s capacity to
produce antibodies and its response to vaccinations, which are important for fighting off a
range of diseases.xxxvii
One of the sites where the Trump regime sought to build a prison for migrant children
was Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, a location with a number of Superfund sites that are “riddled
with toxic, radiological contaminants and hazardous chemicals including heavy metals and
volatile organic compounds from its munitions burial and burning, unexploded ordnance, and
landfills.” Water testing at Fort Bliss in 2017 revealed the presence of radiological
contaminants and chromium, the latter of which has been associated with respiratory system
cancers. Another site the regime seeks to use to cage migrant children is on a plot of land at
Goodfellow Air Force base, which is directly adjacent to a former firing range and next to an
uncapped waste landfill. Separately and together, these two sites could put migrant children at
risk of exposure to PFAS, unexploded munitions, polluted drinking water, radiation, and a host
of other toxic chemicals.xxxviii
The Sierra Club—the nation’s largest environmental organization—discovered that at
least five of the military sites under consideration for incarcerating migrant children have PFAS
contamination. Moreover, a report by the Department of Health and Human Services, which
detailed the negative health effects of PFAS exposure at 125 Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine
Corps bases, was delayed by the Trump regime for six months out of concern that it would
cause a “public relations nightmare” because it revealed that at least 3 million U.S. military
personnel and their families were exposed to toxic water.xxxix The Trump regime and Scott
Pruitt (the Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) tried to prevent the study’s
release by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), but the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention uploaded it to their website after a bipartisan group of elected
officials called for its release.xl

46

Mike Brune, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, issued a condemnation of this
policy in formation:

“Trump’s plans would compound the tragedy of his immigration policy by
exposing kids ripped from their parents’ arms to toxic chemicals because of the
poisoned water his Administration tried to cover up. It is unconscionable that
fearing bad press, Trump and Pruitt conspired to withhold a life-saving study
about a toxic chemical found on military bases. To now lock up separated
migrant children on these contaminated sites shows that Trump will put anyone
in harm's way—from veterans to children—to further his own toxic political
agenda. We should not allow this to happen to anyone’s children. This
Administration is literally threatening the lives of those who come to our country

_J

seeking a better life, and no one should be silent in the face of this outrage.”xli

Again, migrants and their allies are fighting back. In 2018, the Los Angeles-based
Center for Human Rights & Constitutional law filed documents as part of a long-running lawsuit
on behalf of two hundred migrants who reported that immigrant prisons in the U.S. are
unsanitary, overcrowded, and sites where prisoners are forced to drink foul-smelling water. The
migrant prisoners were primarily from the “northern triangle” countries of El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras. Delmis V., a migrant from Honduras and the mother of a two-year
old boy, told investigators, “[T]he worst thing was the water…I had to plug my nose to be able
to drink it. It came out of the faucet and smelled terrible.” Mayra S. was another prisoner and
mother of two young children. She told investigators that she “begged for water” for her
daughter, but was not provided any. She stated, “My daughter started crying. The officers told
me to shut up.” Many other prisoners, like Blanca M. who is from Guatemala, indicated that
they had to wait several days before they were allowed to shower, despite having spent many
days crossing treacherous terrain between Central America and the U.S.xlii
People without citizenship or legal authorization to be in the U.S. are especially
vulnerable to environmental injustices both in “free” residential communities and in prisons.

47

Immigrants—both and adults and children—are routinely caged in facilities overrun with a host
of environmental injustices, including toxic water systems, further compounding the risks to
their health and wellbeing. All around the U.S. immigrant prisoners, their families, and allies,
are pushing for justice and demanding that facilities be cleaned up, shut down, and that
prisoners are released. As a number of prison environmental justice advocates have argued
over the years, one clear way to ensure that people don’t face environmental harms in prisons
is to never cage them in the first place.xliii

Conclusion

Water contamination is widespread throughout carceral facilities in the United States
and inmates are routinely faced with the choice of drinking polluted water or no water at all.
This gross human rights violation is observable at prisons and jails for adults, youth,
immigrants, men, and women—in other words, it is the rule rather than the exception, and if
you are incarcerated in the United States, you have a high probability of exposure to water that
is unsafe and unfit for consumption. Water contamination is an environmental justice issue
because we all require safe drinking water for our daily survival but this basic right is being
denied to some of the most vulnerable and marginalized populations—people of color, lowincome/low-wealth populations, women, immigrants, and LGBTQ folk—all of whom constitute
the majority of the incarcerated in the U.S. Fortunately, prisoners and their allies are fighting
back, rising up, and demanding clean water at the minimum, and also pushing for
decarceration, early release, and abolition of the prison industrial complex. Those goals are the
least we can demand and expect from a society that calls itself a democracy.

48

Resources for More Information and How You Can Get Involved

•

Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons (https://fight-toxic-prisons.org/)

•

Californians for a Responsible Budget (https://www.curbprisonspending.org/)

•

Critical Resistance (http://criticalresistance.org/)

•

Perilous Chronicle (https://perilouschronicle.com/)

•

Prison Legal News (https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/)

i

David Pellow and Fabiana Lake’s Interview with Benjamin.
Dannenberg, “Prison Drinking Water and Wastewater Pollution Threaten Environmental Safety
Nationwide.”
iii
Bernd, “Texas Prisoners Describe Nightmarish Conditions, Exposure to Floodwaters Following Harvey.”
iv
Bernstein, “Chemical Spills into W. Va. River Spurs Closures, Run on Bottled Water.”
v
Heyman and Fitzsimmons, “The Wait Continues for Safe Tap Water in West Virginia.”
vi
Thompson, “The Untold Story of What Happened at an Overcrowded West Virginia Jail After the
Chemical Spill | Prison Legal News.”
vii
Swan, “W.Va Chemical Spill: Is More Regulation Needed?”
viii
Raby, “4 Hospitalized in W. Va. After Chemical Spill.”
ix
Matisse and Nuckols, “Slow Return to Normal Life in Spill-Plagued W. Va.”
x
Gabriel and Coral, “Calls for Oversight in West Virginia Went Unheeded.”
xi
Cherniak, The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster.
xii
Franklin, “Toxic Cloud Leaks at Carbide Plant in West Virginia.”
xiii
Thompson, “The Untold Story of What Happened at an Overcrowded West Virginia Jail After the
Chemical Spill | Prison Legal News.”
xiv
Thompson.
xv
Thompson.
xvi
Pearce, “Many Reported Sickened after West Virginia Chemical Spill, Survey Says.”
xvii
Pearce.
xviii
Thompson, “The Untold Story of What Happened at an Overcrowded West Virginia Jail After the
Chemical Spill | Prison Legal News.”
xix
Stories from South Central Project, “Negligence and Malice: A Preliminary Report on the Water Crisis
at South Central Regional Jail.”
xx
Thompson, “The Untold Story of What Happened at an Overcrowded West Virginia Jail After the
Chemical Spill | Prison Legal News.”
xxi
Stories from South Central Project, “Negligence and Malice: A Preliminary Report on the Water Crisis
at South Central Regional Jail.”
xxii
Stories from South Central Project.
xxiii
Sheppard, “You Can Pollute Drinking Water for 300,000 People and Get Just One Month in Prison.”
xxiv
Sheppard.
xxv
Hersher, “$151 Million Settlement Deal Reached Over West Virginia Water Poisoning.”
xxvi
Bernd, “U.S. Is Locking Immigrants in Toxic Detention Centers.”
xxvii
Bernd.
xxviii
Fischer, “Violence, Abuse, and Death at For-Profit Prisons: A GEO Group Rap Sheet.”
xxix
Colborn, Kwiatkowski, and Bachran, “Natural Gas Operations from a Public Health Perspective.”
xxx
Deaton, Immigrant Detention Center Stifled by Pollution.
ii

49

xxxi

Deaton; Colborn, Kwiatkowski, and Bachran, “Natural Gas Operations from a Public Health
Perspective.”
xxxii
Southwest Workers’ Union, “Internet Press Release: #EndKarnes #EndFamilyDetention #not1more.”
xxxiii
Worland, “A ‘Major Second Wave’ of U.S. Fracking Is About to Be Unleashed Upon the World.”
xxxiv
Bernd, “U.S. Is Locking Immigrants in Toxic Detention Centers.”
xxxv
Alltucker, “‘These Children Needed Their Mothers.’”
xxxvi
Lu, “Immigrant Children in U.S. Detention Camps Could Face yet Another Health Hazard:
Contaminated Water.”
xxxvii
Anderko and Pennea, “Exposers to Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS): Potential Risks to
Reproductive and Children’s Health.”
xxxviii
Earthjustice, “Migrant Detention Centers In Texas Probed For Toxic Waste Threats.”
xxxix
Atkin, “The Military Drinking-Water Crisis the White House Tried to Hide.”
xl
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Toxicological Profile for Perfluoroalkyls: Draft for
Public Comment.
xli
Bourgoin, “Tent Cities Proposed for Migrant Children Have Poisoned Water.”
xlii
Neuman, “Migrants Allege They Were Subjected to Dirty Detention Facilities, Bad Food and Water.”
xliii
Panagioti Tsolkas, Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons.

Photos, Graphics and Figures:
Title-page Photo: Water Faucet. By Ryk Porras. 2019.
https://unsplash.com/photos/sg7y0ux4fdU
Photo 1: Satelite view of South Central Regional Jail and Correctional Facility. Obtained from Inmaid Aid.
https://www.inmateaid.com/prisons/wv-doc-south-central-regional-jail-and-correctional-facility
Photo 2: Detained immigrant children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center. Photo by
Eric Gay. Obtained from Connecticut Public Radio. https://www.wnpr.org/post/obama-immigrant-detentionpolicies-under-fire

50

“Hell on Earth”:
Stories from Prisons and
Jails Around the World

By: Cambria Wilson and
Fabiana Lake

51

Around the world, incarcerated people are systematically exploited and stripped of
their fundamental rights. Cases of forced labor and sterilization, lack of edible and nutritious
food, deficiencies of water and minimal, if any, sanitation are all common characteristics of jails
and prisons. Once someone is placed behind bars, we tend to deprive them of not just their
freedom but their humanity as well. This is whether they made a mistake for which they are
serving time, or are awaiting trial, or because their only “crime” was being a member of an
oppressed group who was profiled, criminalized, and ensnared in the criminal legal system.
The number of people whom we hold behind bars is staggering; according to World Prison
Brief, 10.35 million people are in prison around the world.i Not only is this treatment unethical,
it is also in direct violation of United Nations guidelines. According to the United Nations
Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules), “No prisoner shall
be subjected to, and all prisoners shall be protected from, torture and other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment, for which no circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as
a justification. The safety and security of prisoners, staff, service providers and visitors shall be
ensured at all times.” The guidelines also explicitly state that all incarcerated people are
entitled to showers and toilets, doctors and medicine, suitable exercise, and other basic human
activities. Yet, people are regularly deprived of human rights even more basic than the
Mandela Rules outline; inmates around the world lack food, clean drinking water and a livable
environment. The way we treat our incarcerated populations is important; in addition to the
basic moral and ethical reasons, their treatment directly affects their behavior after they are
released. The Mandela Rules also remind us that “The purposes of a sentence….[is] primarily to
protect society against crime and to reduce recidivism. Those purposes can be achieved only if
the period of imprisonment is used to ensure, so far as possible, the reintegration of such
persons into society upon release...” Currently, the majority of prison systems are plagued by
corruption, exploitation and lack of funding, causing prisoners to be faced with countless
environmental injustices and making many prisons a “hell on earth,” or the “end of the world”
according to many Chinese and Iranian inmates.ii

52

Case Studies: Haiti and Zimbabwe

Haitian prisons, filled to 400% capacity, are some of the most overcrowded in the
world. iii This level of overcrowding forces inmates to sleep in makeshift hammocks or squeeze
four to a bed, often sleeping in shifts, because cells have three to four times as many inmates
as beds. iv Inmates are generally locked in these same cells 22-23 hours per day.v Due to
corruption and congestion in the system, 80% of detainees have yet to be convictedvi and
inmates can expect to wait 8 years to see a judge, if they ever do.vii Facilities reek of feces and
urine; in the largest Haitian prison in Port Au Prince, inmates have no latrine, so they are forced
to defecate in bags and throw it out their barred windows. This results in the outside of the
building being stained with feces (which also characterizes the state of the floors inside).viii Soap
and drinking water are scarce, and inmates are only fed two meager meals a day of cornmeal,
rice and oats,ix or water and flour.x All inmates are malnourished and underfed, unless they
have sufficient funds to bribe guards.xi Diseases due to malnourishment and lack of sanitation
plague the prison population. The infirmary in the Port Au Prince facility is so overburdened
that some inmates sleep under infirmary beds. Patients look emaciated, with sunken
cheekbones and are too weak to stand
up.xii Tuberculosis, beriberi (a disease
caused by thiamine deficiency, which
can cause muscle paralysis and heart
failure), cholera, scabies, and anemia
plague the inmates, causing an
average of three deaths per year in the
Port Au Prince facility.xiii In January of
2017, 21 inmates died of illness.
Photo 1: Extreme overcrowding in a Haitian prison cell. Digital
Image. Daily Mail.

Thomas Ess of Haiti’s Red Cross said,

“It's a permanent struggle just to keep them (Haitian prisoners) alive.”xiv

53

Another case study exhibiting violations of human, species and environmental rights in
numerous sectors is the prison system of Zimbabwe. Severe overcrowding of facilities, coupled
with the broader problem of national economic hardship, results in abhorrent conditions for
incarcerated people in Zimbabwe. In fact, presidents have granted mass pardons for thousands
of inmates in multiple years, including 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020, due to food shortages and
global criticism.xv In the
first 11 months of 2013, at
least 100 people died
from malnutrition in
Zimbabwe’s prisons.xvi For
many inmates, their only
meal consists of a scoop
of plain sadza (porridge
made from any number of
pulverized grains and
water) and, at times, pap

Photo 2: Convicts in overcrowded Zimbabwe prisons. Photo. International
Anticorruption Media.

(dough made from cornstarch and water) served once a day.xvii In some instances, one toilet is
shared by up to 250 people.xviii According to the New York Intelligencer, most of the lavatories
can only be flushed from the outside, which results in a constant overflow of excrement.xix
Prisoners are unable to sleep in their cells due to the massive volume of human waste covering
the floors.xx This attracts vermin and insects such as spiders, lice, and bed bugs. Lice and
weevils infiltrate the prison’s food, further contributing to the deteriorating health of those who
consume it. Basic essentials such as soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes are not provided unless
donated. However, even these are usually stolen by underpaid prison staff. xxi A reporter
describes conditions by comparing inmates to prisoners of war: “People were absolutely thin,
all you could see was their eyes and their ribs; you could see right through to their
backbone.”xxii Even after people die from these conditions, the suffering continues. Since local
mortuaries are already overwhelmed and will not accept these bodies, they sit in laundry rooms

54

on site rotting until there is a plastic bag available to move them to graves in which multiple
bodies are piled into at a time. The bodies often pile up because staff cannot locate the
person’s family, and so the pungent smell infiltrates all areas of the facility. If the family is
indeed located, they must sort through the bodies until they find their loved one.xxiii
Though the conditions within these facilities are horrifying, it is important to
acknowledge that the Zimbabwean government is indeed taking measures to mitigate some of
these circumstances. For instance, in partnership with the International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC), inmates in jails and prisons throughout the country participate in garden projects.
In doing so, the prisons hope to eventually become self-sufficient and therefore protected
against governmental cuts in their food budget. Furthermore, ICRC and the Zimbabwean
government utilize drought resistant crops and irrigation methods since this is an increasingly
relevant challenge in the region.xxiv Crops such as cowpeas, sorghum, maize and soya beans
are all grown and harvested on site. Additionally, the ICRC and the Zimbabwe National Water
Authority are drilling boreholes and rehabilitating supply systems to gain regular access to
clean water for nearly 10,000 detainees and staff members.xxv Chikurubi Farm Prison, Chikurubi
Female Prison, and Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison all help construct this system and reap
the benefits of potable water.xxvi
Although Haiti and Zimbabwe are just two countries, we believe they exemplify the
extreme injustices bestowed upon incarcerated people regardless of the country’s economic
standing or location. In this chapter, we will present experiences of people from various
backgrounds and placements to highlight consistent themes of environmental injustices in
prisons around the world.

Sanitation, Hygiene, and Medical Care

The first component of this chapter’s focus is the status of sanitation within carceral
facilities. Without a clean environment, inmates are subjected to a considerable variety of
health risks, including infections and diseases of the body with both short and long-lasting
effects. Since contaminated facilities often coincide with other hazards such as poor medical

55

care, prison sentences do not just demand time; they also infringe upon one’s basic human
rights.
Shahr-e Rey Prison (also known as Qarchak Women’s Prison) in Iran epitomizes the
prioritization of convenience and economic value over the wellbeing of incarcerated people.
Originally a poultry farm, the facility was repurposed as a prison in 2011. Today, about 1,400
women are held in old livestock warehouses, along with dozens of their children.xxvii This
number varies with each season, but total volume increases annually.xxviii Pungent odors of
manure and livestock continue to occupy the area. These odors, along with other airborne
hazards, are intensified since there is no ventilation. Women regularly suffer from respiratory
distress and disease because of the poor air quality, a problem compounded by the absence of
medical care.xxix Former inmates reported that 130 people are infected with HIV or Hepatitis,
and at least six have scabies.xxx Yet, instead of bedrooms, hallways are lined with beds so
women are in constant contact due to their close proximity. There have been constant
outbreaks of lice as well since authorities refuse to provide screenings or treatment.xxxi Cleaning
the facility is a responsibility of the inmates, but sanitation equipment provided at the
beginning of each month runs out in just a few days. Though prisoners can purchase soap,
prices are extremely high and there is not a large enough supply for everyone.xxxii The prison’s
geographic location on the side of Tehran-Varamin Highway and a high population density in
cramped spaces combine to make perfect conditions for breeding bacteria and spreading
illness.xxxiii
Cameroonian inmates are given buckets to use as latrines, which are then emptied into
gutters that flow into the communities surrounding the facilities. Inmates reported having to
pay if they want to use a real bathroom facility.xxxiv Egyptian prisoners do not even have the
option to pay for a latrine; they are only given a pail in their cell, without water, which is
emptied in the mornings. Women using these pails report that it is extremely unsanitary and
has caused vaginal infections.xxxv Inmates being deprived of latrines and forced to use buckets
or plastic bags instead is not unique to these two African countries. This phenomenon is
observed in multiple nations: Haiti, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Kenya, Fiji, the Bahamas and others
have reported the same conditions.xxxvi

56

The abysmal sanitation in many prisons around the world has led to a variety of disease
outbreaks. In Antigua and Barbuda, bucket toilets in cells, a lack of running water, stray animals
in the facilities and raw meat and feces on the floors have resulted in prisons as spaces rife with
disease. In 2016, MRSA (a virulent staph infection), chicken pox, and myriad other illnesses
plagued inmates in Antigua’s prisons, deterring all teachers from coming to the facilities,
making the consequence of bad sanitation two-fold.xxxvii In Kenya, bad ventilation, bucket
toilets and overall filthy facilities have caused outbreaks of scabies, tuberculosis and diarrhea
among inmates.xxxviii These cases exemplify a phenomenon observed around the world: inmates
are treated as less than human beings, forced to live under environmentally unjust conditions,
and their rights to health are revoked upon imprisonment.

Food

Prisoners around the world suffer from severe malnourishment, which often leads to
illness and even death. The whole country of Venezuela is currently experiencing food
shortages due to its political turmoil, and the incarcerated population is experiencing the worst
of these effects. Due to severe underfunding, Venezuelan prisons are generally unable to
provide inmates with sufficient food rations, so they have to rely on relatives to survive.xxxix
Under Coronavirus sanctions, outside food was banned, causing inmates to go the extreme
lengths of killing and eating stray animals within the facility.xl In Jamaica, prisoners subsist
solely off of rice and sugar water, which they are served twice daily, if they are lucky.xli In Papua
New Guinea, inmates were released for a day to forage for food in the spring of 2018. It is
common that when inmates do receive food, it is rotten, full of insects, or contaminated in
some way.xlii In Phonthong Prison in Laos, inmates are given two meals a day of pig fat soup
with rice, which is frequently contaminated with husk and stones. Inmates share a single bowl
between cellmates.xliii The soup is sometimes supplemented with catfish paste, which is made
with catfish from the facility’s pond. Unfortunately, this pond is also the outlet for sewage waste
from the facility.xliv Mexican inmates are often served food contaminated with rocks and worms,
and guards frequently steal the food before it ever reaches the inmates.xlv The common
denominator in all of these cases is corruption and lack of funding for prisons. Papua New

57

Guinean prisons used to receive $18,000 USD per month to feed inmates, but in April of 2018
that budget got cut to $7,000 USD, causing the extreme measures noted above.xlvi These
forms of prisoner neglect constitute food injustices, which are exacerbated by the lack of
accountability or repercussions that prison and governmental authorities face for their actions.
Food injustices are an example of environmental injustice because they reflect the ways that
vulnerable and marginalized peoples experience threats to their wellbeing, which are linked to
broader anti-environmental policies, and are rooted in ideologies of oppression.

Air Pollution

A basic necessity for human and terrestrial life is breathable air. Without it, the bodies
and minds of living beings are incapable of carrying out even the simplest tasks. Exposure to
any kind of airborne contamination can lead to an abundance of health risks. According to the
World Health Organization, ambient air pollution accounts for 29% of all death and disease
associated with lung cancer, and can lead to loss of lung capacity and decreased function, as
well as diseases such as asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, heart disease, and more.xlvii Yet,
prisons and jails around the world not only fail to protect incarcerated people from these
hazards, they are often built in areas of high exposure because of convenience and economic
advantage without regard for the health risks associated with these decisions.xlviii In India,
Ludhiana Central Jail epitomizes this neglect. This facility is placed 1.67 miles from Tajpur
Roadxlix which hosts a high density (about 120) of dyeing companies.l Within these facilities,
various products such as textiles are artificially colored. This process involves the use and
production of various chemicals like salts and bleaches.li Furthermore, the factories emit
enormous volumes of smoke and ash hourly.lii These toxins infiltrate the bodies of inmates
daily, and pollute their water sources. In fact, inspections by the Punjab government have
found that at least 86 of the dyeing units are illegally using rice husk and other agricultural
residue to fuel their boilers for energy.liii As a result, exposed inmates suffer several diseases of
the eyes, stomach and skin.liv
Mandoli jail is located in Delhi, India, which has the worst air quality of any major city in
the world according to the World Health Organization.lv Compounding these conditions,

58

inmates at the jail have reported a lack of access to adequate medical care. Although there are
nine doctors on staff, only one makes visits during the mornings, leaving dozens of inmates
helpless and in need of treatment. Facilities nearby consist of electronics scrap dealers who
burn rubber tires and metal wires among other toxic materials and industrial waste, thus
directly harming those unable to leave or who have neither protective equipment nor medical
treatment to cope with the effects. A large number of people credit their respiratory ailments
to the electronic scrap industry’s activities. One inmate reported that air vents and water
coolers were out of service. In letters from inmates to the Delhi High Court, people described a
sky that was covered by a black layer of ashes at times, as well as the windows, plants and
other areas of the facility. This is coupled with poor water quality and inadequate amounts of
food. In combination, toxic air and water with insufficient food leaves inmates susceptible to
severe health deficiencies.lvi
Another site of polluted air in carceral facilities is the Jaslyk Prison in Uzbekistan, which
was located on what was previously a Soviet military base that was used for chemical weapons
testing. The prison was built around 100 miles from the Aral Salts, which occupy a plot of land
the size of the Netherlands and used to be a sea 50 years ago.lvii The Aral Salts are now known
as the world's most toxic desert due to chemical runoff. The toxicity originates from a mix of
pesticides, fertilizers and other toxic runoff that the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers bring from
surrounding towns and cities. The Aral Salts produce tens of thousands of tons of chemical
cocktail dust that has been found as far as Greenland and Japan.lviii Due to its close proximity,
Jaslyk receives the brunt of this toxic dust, which poisons the air and soil surrounding the
facility. This mix of chemicals from the military testing site, along with toxins from the Aral
Salts, also poisons the inmates, leading to a variety of illnesses like anemia, certain types of
cancer, and diseases of the liver and kidney.lix
In 2017, Jaslyk was closed down by the government of Uzbekistan. Authorities claim
this decision was taken to improve their human rights stance, seeing as the prison was an
environmental justice disaster and a torture center. However, some experts say the real reason
the facility was closed was to improve Uzbekistan's image on the global stage, not to care for
its people.lx

59

Treatment of Women (& children)

When examining conditions within carceral facilities and internment camps, it is critical
to examine the range of specific demographic groups that face even greater marginalization.
Women epitomize this challenge, as their gender and historical treatment makes them
particularly vulnerable to certain injustices. Although women make up the minority of
incarcerated people, they are notably vulnerable to certain conditions. This includes lack of
access to medical care involving menstruation, pregnancy and labor, as well as heightened
rates of sexual assault. This mistreatment can be largely attributed to the fact that prisons and
camps have generally been structured to cater to the standard male inmate, thus inherently
neglecting the needs of the female body. Women are regularly subjected to the same
conditions created with the male experience in mind and are forced to cope. In the course of
researching prison conditions for this report, we found that women consistently faced these
vulnerabilities regardless of location.
For instance, incarcerated women in Jordan have no means to dry their clothes, which
forces them to wear their damp articles, thus resulting in frequent cases of urinary tract
infections (UTIs).lxi Moreover, female inmates in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique and
Nigeria are not provided with sanitary towels and therefore forced to improvise during
menstruation with items like hats and blankets.lxii Oftentimes, even when they are provided with
sanitary products, they are extremely limited in quantity and quality. In certain Thai prisons,
menstruation products are received twice a year in bulk packages that quickly run out.
However, even when they are available, inmates are only allowed two of each item in their
locker at a time in order to prevent them from being used as currency. lxiii In the United States,
inmates have limited access to these resources because of their financial status. A former
inmate explained, “..if I want to request the medical right to get more pads because, say, I
have a heavier flow this month than last month, I would have to pay four dollars just to be seen
by a doctor. When I’m making nine cents after tax [while working at the prison], you’ve got to
think if I want to put my whole month's income into hopefully being allowed approval for extra
pads if they think I deserve it.” lxiv

60

Lack of medical care is also particularly problematic when it comes to prenatal care and
labor. This harms not only the woman who is carrying a child, but the child as well who is not
only innocent of any crime, but utterly dependent on the wellbeing of their mother. In Jordan,
pregnant women face horrific abuses even in pre-trial conditions. Several women have
recounted their experiences of being held in unauthorized facilities while awaiting transfer. One
woman interviewed by the National Centre for Human Rights Jordan said she was held in a
police cell for weeks during the winter.lxv Despite being pregnant, she had no access to warm
water, medical care, or clean air since ventilation was minimal. This was especially harmful since
the air was contaminated with significant amounts of dust particles. Her child died upon birth
as a result.lxvi Considering that a large proportion of women are incarcerated as minors, and
oftentimes for protecting themselves from violence or for expressing freedoms,lxvii these trends
call for concern on a global scale.
In Nigeria, a former inmate recalled being detained without trial at four months into her
pregnancy. By the time she gave birth, she was too malnourished to lactate and was only
provided water and pap to feed her child. Nigeria, like many other countries, allows children to
stay with their mothers in prison. As many inmates have no other option, this is a fairly common
situation. However, children who do so are forced to face the same conditions as the other
adult inmates. This includes shortages of potable food and water, poor sanitation, infrequent
exercise, routine infestations, and excessive exposure to sun and heat, all of which can be
especially detrimental to the development of a child’s body. One child stated that for the first
ten months of her stay, she was not allowed to bathe at all.lxviii
In the United States, the law fails to adequately protect pregnant women prisoners.
Before October of 2007, it was legal to shackle a woman by her stomach when pregnant,
during labor, and after birth.lxix This practice poses dangers to the health of both mothers and
their children since any kind of restraints make it difficult for doctors to assess the condition of
the mother and provide proper medical intervention if necessary. For instance, if there is a
baby that is breeched or in need of an emergency C-section, the time that it would take to
unshackle and reposition the mother could be the difference between life and death for both
of them. Both the American Medical Association and the American College of OBGYNs have

61

expressed vehement opposition to this practice. Yet, a study conducted by the Correctional
Association of New York in 2017 found that 23 of 27 inmate births in the state occurred while
the inmate was in shackles, a violation of the federal law.lxx Furthermore, an investigation by the
National Women’s Law Center assigned 38 states a failing grade because of the lack of
adequate, or any, policies that ensure prisoners receive access to prenatal care. That same
investigation concluded that 34 states do not even require screening and treatment for women
prisoners with high risk pregnancies.lxxi According to John Hopkins University School of
Medicine, over 20% of prison pregnancies result in miscarriages in some states.lxxii The lack of
data makes understanding the treatment of pregnant women in the US even more challenging:
49 of 50 states fail to report all incarcerated womens’ pregnancies and their outcomes.lxxiii In
ICE detention facilities, there is no prohibition against shackling pregnant detainees at all,
despite the fact that there have been 0 cases of pregnant women attempting to escape during
prenatal checkups, postpartum recovery or labor. lxxiv
Not only are
detainees subjected to lack of
medical treatment, but in
some cases, forced to
undergo unnecessary
procedures with lasting
effects. Dawn Wooten, a
nurse who worked at ICE’s
Irwin County Detention
Center in Georgia for three

Photo 3: Pregnant Inmate Shackled to Bed. Photo by Jane Atwood.

years, recently revealed that a
concerningly high number of hysterectomies have been performed on immigrant prisoners in
the facility during her time as an employee. In this surgery, all parts of the uterus are removed
in their entirety. Wooten alleges that this procedure is generally performed on immigrants who
only, or primarily, speak Spanish. For this reason, she suspects the majority of them were
uninformed about what would happen to their bodies. These claims were supported by

62

another current member of Irwin’s medical department, though their identity remains
anonymous. According to that source, an off-site doctor carried out the operation on “just
about everybody,” oftentimes obtaining consent by “simply Googling Spanish.”lxxv
Furthermore, these surgeries were believed to be conducted in violation of health and safety
standards. According to one patient, she was not properly anesthetized and overheard her
doctor tell someone that he removed the wrong ovary by accident and that she would not be
able to have children as a result. Women who went in to have other procedures done were also
victims of nonconsensual hysterectomies; some went in to get a cyst drained, or had only
complained of heavy menstrual cycles.lxxvi This is a direct infringement on the reproductive
rights of these persons, and on their right to give or withhold consent to treatment.
Environmental justice does not solely involve one’s right to be free of pollution; it also concerns
the ways in which one’s body is treated and impacted by institutional actors. This includes the
right to give or withhold consent to life-altering procedures. This issue has been ongoing, as
black and brown bodies have been used for medical experimentation since at least the 17th
century the United States.lxxvii
Unfortunately, sexual abuse is another common injustice to which women are
disproportionately subjected. Although statistics are severely under representative of these
occurrences, due to lack of reporting--whether it be from victims or authorities--there is still an
extensive volume of data available and even one case is too many. Women’s bodies are
abused in a variety of situations, including even the most sinister instances. For example,
women in Lowell Prison in Miami reported to the Miami Herald in 2015 that they were forced
to exchange sex for soap, toilet paper, and sanitary napkins. In China’s Xinjiang concentration
camps, escapees describe systemic rape used as a tool of mental and physical abuse. Fellow
inmates are forced to witness these horrific events and are often punished if they attempt to
intervene or even show an emotional reaction.lxxviii In Australia's prison system, Human Rights
Watch reports that nearly 50% of inmates have mental or physical disabilities. Although those
who are considered in need of help are assigned caretakers, there have been various report of
sexual abuse at the hands of these personnel as well.lxxix Tibetan women held in Drapchi Prison

63

suffer similar atrocities. Inmates reported being forced to stand naked during interrogations
while others were raped, sometimes with instruments such as sticks or electric cattle prods.lxxx

Conclusion

Prisoners all around the world experience punishment that is extreme and
disproportionate to their alleged crimes. Malnutrition and starvation, pollution and lack of
sanitation, disease and forced labor are all too common across the globe in prison facilities.
These conditions are environmentally unjust because they reveal how marginalized and
vulnerable populations experience threats to their bodily integrity and wellbeing that are
perpetrated by government and corporate institutions, and that most of these harms are also
linked to harms committed against broader ecosystems. There are many changes that need to
occur in order to reverse these trends and practices, but perhaps the first step is to shift the
way we think about incarcerated people. We, as a society, have to transcend the view that
crime can dictate this kind of treatment especially when many of these persons are awaiting
trial, are wrongly convicted, or sentenced to years in prison because of a minor charge. There
is indeed hope for improvement; we can look to Zimbabwe’s gardening system and other
successful prison reform methods as discussed in our Chapter 6 of this report. These people
are forced to fight for their own survival on a daily basis and many are making a difference
through their resistance. Current and former inmates are publishing educational literature,
participating in protests, and organizing advocacy efforts. Now that we have seen a glimpse of
what they are facing, it is only right that we join them.

i

World Prison Brief, “More than 10.35 Million People Are in Prison around the World, New Report
Shows.,” 2016, 3, https://www.prisonstudies.org/news/more-1035-million-people-are-prison-around-worldnew-report-shows.
ii
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “Refworld | Country Information and Guidance - Iran:
Prison Conditions,” accessed July 29, 2020, https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6b7f34.html; Laogai Forced Labor in Chinas Gulag’s. Short Clip 2, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Tu-5KhNbw.
iii
Florence Elie, Transcript: Dateline, Haiti’s Prison from Hell, interview by Seyi Rhodes, April 4, 2017,
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/sites/sbs.com.au.news/files/transcripts/1131609_dateline_haitisprisonfrom
hell_transcript.html.
iv
Elie.

64

v

Kelly Mclaughlin, “Haitian Prison Where Inmates Live in Overcrowded and Filthy Conditions,” Mail
Online, February 20, 2017, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/~/article-4241466/index.html.
vi
Elie, Transcript: Dateline, Haiti’s Prison from Hell.
vii
Mclaughlin, “Haitian Prison Where Inmates Live in Overcrowded and Filthy Conditions.”
viii
Haiti’s Prison from Hell | Unreported World, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwE_uUgomd0.
ix
Mclaughlin, “Haitian Prison Where Inmates Live in Overcrowded and Filthy Conditions.”
x
Elie, Transcript: Dateline, Haiti’s Prison from Hell.
xi
Mclaughlin, “Haitian Prison Where Inmates Live in Overcrowded and Filthy Conditions.”
xii
Mclaughlin.
xiii
Elie, Transcript: Dateline, Haiti’s Prison from Hell.
xiv
Mclaughlin, “Haitian Prison Where Inmates Live in Overcrowded and Filthy Conditions.”
xv
Merrit Kennedy, “Zimbabwe Pardons Thousands Of Prisoners Because Of Overcrowding, Food
Shortages,” May 27, 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/27/479726288/zimbabwepardons-thousands-of-prisoners-because-of-overcrowding-food-shortages; Kitsepile Nyathi, “Zimbabwe
to Release 5,000 Prisoners amid Food Shortage,” The East African, March 5, 2020,
https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/rest-of-africa/zimbabwe-to-release-5-000-prisoners-amid-foodshortage-1437982.
xvi
Adam K. Raymond, “What’s Life Like in Zimbabwe’s Prisons?,” Intelligencer, August 6, 2015,
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/08/whats-life-like-in-zimbabwes-prisons.html.
xvii
Journeyman Pictures, Inside the Abhorrent Conditions of Zimbabwe’s Prison System, 2016,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX9YDUtg8No.
xviii
Raymond, “What’s Life Like in Zimbabwe’s Prisons?”
xix
Raymond.
xx
Raymond.
xxi
Raymond.
xxii
Journeyman Pictures, Inside the Abhorrent Conditions of Zimbabwe’s Prison System.
xxiii
Journeyman Pictures.
xxiv
Renaud Meyssonnier, “Nepal: Kathmandu Prison, ‘A Filthy, Chaotic Ghetto’ (II),” Prison Insider,
November 28, 2017, https://www.prison-insider.com/en/articles/nepal-la-prison-de-katmandou-un-ghettocrado-et-bordelique-ii.
xxv
International Committee of Red Cross, “ICRC Audiovisual Archives,” ICRC Audiovisual archives,
accessed September 22, 2020, https://avarchives.icrc.org/Picture/132038.
xxvi
International Committee of Red Cross, “Zimbabwe: Improving Access to Water at Chikurubi Prison
Complex,” April 24, 2015, https://www.icrc.org/en/document/zimbabwe-improving-access-water-chikurubiprison-complex.
xxvii
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “Refworld | Country Information and Guidance Iran.”
xxviii
Human Rights Activists News Agency, “Qarchak Prison; a List of Political Prisoners and Prison
Conditions,” Hrana - News Agency (blog), March 2, 2020, https://www.en-hrana.org/qarchak-prison-a-listof-political-prisoners-and-prison-conditions.
xxix
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “Refworld | Country Information and Guidance Iran.”
xxx
Human Rights Activists News Agency, “Qarchak Prison; a List of Political Prisoners and Prison
Conditions.”
xxxi
Women’s Committee - National Council of Resistance o Iran, “Abysmal Conditions of Inmates in
Qarchak Prison for Women,” NCRI Women Committee (blog), July 31, 2020, https://women.ncriran.org/abysmal-conditions-of-inmates-in-qarchak-prison-for-women.
xxxii
Women’s Committee - National Council of Resistance o Iran.
xxxiii
Human Rights Activists News Agency, “Qarchak Prison; a List of Political Prisoners and Prison
Conditions.”
xxxiv
Helen Namondo Fontebo, “PRISON CONDITIONS IN CAMEROON: THE NARRATIVES OF FEMALE
INMATES,” n.d., 347.
xxxv
Fontebo.
xxxvi
Ranmali Bandarage, “Sri Lankan Jails ‘hell’ for Women,” ALJAZEERA, July 25, 2020,
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/07/2011725142452794174.html; Jason McCue, “Four
Weeks of Trauma in a Jamaican Jail,” The Guardian, December 19, 2004, sec. World news,

65

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/dec/19/jasonmccue.theobserver; Elvis Ondieki, “Inside Kenya’s
Criminal Justice System: Only the Tough Survive,” Daily Nation, January 28, 2017,
https://www.nation.co.kehttps://www.nation.co.ke/kenya/life-and-style/lifestyle/inside-kenya-s-criminaljustice-system-only-the-tough-survive--354188; Kelvin Anthony and Kate Lyons, “‘People Come out
Worse’: My Time inside Fiji’s Broken Prison System,” The Guardian, May 16, 2020, sec. World news,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/16/people-come-out-worse-my-time-inside-fijis-brokenprison-system; “REGIONAL - Bahamas Prison ‘Not Fit for Humanity,’” Barbados Today, May 28, 2019,
https://barbadostoday.bb/2019/05/27/regional-bahamas-prison-not-fit-for-humanity/.
xxxvii
Gemma Handy, “Antigua’s Harsh Colonial-Era Prison,” BBC News, December 18, 2016, sec. Latin
America & Caribbean, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38220405.
xxxviii
Ondieki, “Inside Kenya’s Criminal Justice System.”
xxxix
Angus Berwick and Vivian Sequera, “Anarchy in Venezuela’s Jails Laid Bare by Massacre over
Food,” Reuters, May 8, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-security-prison-insightidUSKBN22K2FL.
xl
Berwick and Sequera.
xli
Emily Richards, “Jailed in Jamaica,” Prisoners Abroad (blog), December 11, 2019,
https://www.prisonersabroad.org.uk/blog/jailed-in-jamaica.
xlii
Eleanor Ainge Roy, “‘Desperate’ Solution: Papua New Guinea Prisoners Freed to Find Food as Budget
Cuts Bite,” The Guardian, May 30, 2018, sec. World news,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/31/papua-new-guinea-prisoners-freed-find-food-budgetcuts.
xliii
“PHONTHONG PRISON (FOREIGNERS JAIL) VIENTIANE LAOS,” accessed July 18, 2020,
https://www.phaseloop.com/foreignprisoners/prison-phonthong.html.
xliv
“PHONTHONG PRISON (FOREIGNERS JAIL) VIENTIANE LAOS.”
xlv
Carrie Khan, “Notorious Mexican Criminals Say Prison Conditions Are Inhumane,” NPR.org, March 24,
2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/03/24/395103104/notorious-mexican-criminals-sayprison-conditions-are-inhumane.
xlvi
Roy, “‘Desperate’ Solution.”
xlvii
World Health Organization, “Ambient Air Pollution: Health Impacts,” WHO (World Health Organization),
accessed September 26, 2020, http://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/health-impacts/en/.
xlviii
Candice Bernd, Zoe Loftus-Farren, and Maureen Nandini Mitra, “America’s Toxic Prisons: The
Environmental Injustices of Mass Incarceration,” Truthout, June 1, 2017,
https://truthout.org/articles/america-s-toxic-prisons-the-environmental-injustices-of-mass-incarceration/.
xlix
Srina Ja, “TEXTILE DYEING INDUSTRIES IN INDIA,” accessed October 3, 2020,
https://www.academia.edu/8537218/TEXTILE_DYEING_INDUSTRIES_IN_INDIA.
l
Divya Goyal, “Ludhiana Inmates Write to Jail Chief, Say Pollution Killing Us,” The Indian Express (blog),
August 12, 2018, https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ludhiana/ludhiana-inmates-write-to-jail-chief-saypollution-killing-us-5302495/.
li
Ja, “TEXTILE DYEING INDUSTRIES IN INDIA.”
lii
Goyal, “Ludhiana Inmates Write to Jail Chief, Say Pollution Killing Us.”
liii
The Times of India, “Punjab Govt Told to Take Action against Polluting Dyeing Units | Chandigarh News
- Times of India,” The Times of India, May 15, 2019,
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/punjab-govt-told-to-take-action-against-pollutingdyeing-units/articleshow/69333596.cms.
liv
Goyal, “Ludhiana Inmates Write to Jail Chief, Say Pollution Killing Us.”
lv
World Health Organization, “WHO Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database (Update 2016),” WHO
(World Health Organization, 2016), http://www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/cities/en/.
lvi
Sneha Agrawal, “Imagine Living with Delhi’s Pollution in a Prison. These Inmates Don’t Have To,” India
Today, December 9, 2017, https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/pollution-mandoli-jail-11035982017-12-09.
lvii
Mansur Mirovalev, “Uzbekistan: A Dying Sea, Mafia Rule, and Toxic Fish,” News, Al Jazeera, June 11,
2015, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/06/uzbekistan-dying-sea-mafia-rule-toxic-fish150610102819386.html.
lviii
Mirovalev.

66

lix

Mirovalev; Mansur Mirovalev, “Uzbekistan Closes Infamous Prison, but Experts Question Motive,”
News, Al Jazeera, August 12, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/uzbekistan-closesinfamous-prison-experts-question-motive-190811101338923.html.
lx
Mirovalev, “Uzbekistan Closes Infamous Prison, but Experts Question Motive.”
lxi
Joe Baker and Elna Sondergaard, “Conditions for Women in Detention in Jordan,” DIGNITY Publication
Series on Torture and Organised Violence, 2014, https://www.dignity.dk/wpcontent/uploads/publication_series_no9.pdf.
lxii
Meyssonnier, “Nepal.”
lxiii
Didtita Simcharoen, “Life behind Bars: Ex-Prisoners Describe a Typical Day in Thai Prison,” Coconuts,
May 4, 2017, https://coconuts.co/bangkok/features/life-behind-bars-ex-prisoners-describe-typical-daythai-prison/.
lxiv
John Oliver, Prison Labor: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), 2019,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjqaNQ018zU.
lxv
Baker and Sondergaard, “Conditions for Women in Detention in Jordan.”
lxvi
Baker and Sondergaard.
lxvii
Baker and Sondergaard.
lxviii
“Prison Conditions in Nigeria.,” accessed August 25, 2020,
https://www.ecoi.net/en/file/local/2020111/Nigeria_prison_conditions_Nov.pdf.
lxix
“Listen to the Stuff Mom Never Told You Episode - Pregnant in Prison on IHeartRadio,” iHeartRadio,
October 6, 2017, https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-mom-never-told-you-21123631/episode/pregnantin-prison-30231080/?
lxx
“Listen to the Stuff Mom Never Told You Episode - Pregnant in Prison on IHeartRadio.”
lxxi
“Listen to the Stuff Mom Never Told You Episode - Pregnant in Prison on IHeartRadio.”
lxxii
Roxanne Daniel, “Prisons Neglect Pregnant Women in Their Healthcare Policies,” December 5, 2019,
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/12/05/pregnancy/.
lxxiii
“Listen to the Stuff Mom Never Told You Episode - Pregnant in Prison on IHeartRadio.”
lxxiv
“Listen to the Stuff Mom Never Told You Episode - Pregnant in Prison on IHeartRadio.”
lxxv
Kari Paul, “Ice Detainees Faced Medical Neglect and Hysterectomies, Whistleblower Alleges,” The
Guardian, September 15, 2020, sec. US news, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/14/icedetainees-hysterectomies-medical-neglect-irwin-georgia.
lxxvi
Paul.
lxxvii
Lily Rothman, “History of African-Americans and Medical Research Goes Beyond Henrietta Lacks,”
Time, April 21, 2017, https://time.com/4746297/henrietta-lacks-movie-history-research-oprah/.
lxxviii
Zamira Rahim, “Muslim Prisoners in China’s Xinjiang Concentration Camps Subjected to Gang Rape
and Medical Experiments, Former Detainee Says,” The Independent, October 22, 2019,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-xinjiang-uighur-muslim-detention-camps-xi-jinpingpersecution-a9165896.html.
lxxix
Kriti Sharma and Amy Braunschweiger, “Interview: The Horror of Australia’s Prisons,” Human Rights
Watch, February 6, 2018, https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/06/interview-horror-australias-prisons.
lxxx
“Behind-Bars_1998.Pdf,” accessed October 3, 2020, https://www.tchrd.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/03/Behind-Bars_1998.pdf.

Photos, Graphics and Figures:
Title page photo: A prisoner hauls food past a prison building at the National Penitentiary. By AP.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4241466/Haitian-prison-inmates-live-filthy-conditions.html
Photo 1: Extreme overcrowding in a Haitian prison cell. Digital Image. Daily Mail. 20 February 2018.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4241466/Haitian-prison-inmates-live-filthy-conditions.html
Photo 2: International Anticorruption Media. Coronavirus threat to convicts in overcrowded Zimbabwe prisons.
2020. Photo. http://anticorr.media/en/soronavirus-threat-to-convicts-in-overcrowded-zimbabwe-prisons/
Photo 3: Pregnant detainee handcuffed to her bed. By Jane Atwood. Photo.
https://www.boulderweekly.com/news/lawmaker-stop-shackling-inmates-in-labor/

67

Religious and Ethnic
Persecution in the
Middle East and Asia

By: Fabiana Lake
and Elijah Baker

68

Minority persecution is an age-old phenomenon, whether it be based on race, ethnicity,
or religion. This heinous practice has led to countless genocides and the full erasure of many
ethnic groups now only preserved in history, if at all. While persecution can occur through
conquests and bloody wars, sometimes it appears in other forms. Minority groups like the
Uyghurs and Tibetans in Asia, and the Palestinians in the Middle East are severely restricted
and policed in movement, and many are held in prison or detention camps and are
experiencing violations of their human rights by occupying governments like China and Israel.
These populations face food shortages, forced labor, forced sterilizations and many other
forms of torture. They are being persecuted for a variety of reasons, sometimes because they
inhabit land that is rich in resources that more powerful groups desire, and in other cases
because more powerful groups and governments simply desire greater political, economic,
and cultural power and control over a region. Additionally, we focus on China and Israel in this
chapter because both governments are using their structural power to extract natural resources
from territories they have annexed. We highlight this as a modern issue that the global
community should be concerned with, which we name the natural resource detention nexus.

The Uyghurs

In modern day China, concentration camps not only still exist, but are growing every
day. The Chinese state is persecuting the Uyghur community, an ethnic group with Turkic
heritage, by forcing many of them into ‘re-education’ camps, claiming they are a terrorist threat
to the state and that they need to be re-educated to assimilate into Chinese culture. While this
Turkic group's name can be spelled Uighur or Uyghur, in this report I have chosen to use
Uyghur, which is the spelling that this ethnic group prefers, as it is closer to the pronunciation
in the Uyghur native tongue.i The Uyghurs inhabit East Turkestan in Central Asia, which, in
1955, China occupied and renamed Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.ii
China is persecuting the Uyghurs for a host of reasons. Chairman Xi Jinping deeply
values Han Chinese nationalism (Hans are the dominant ethnic group in China), and the
Uyghurs are an ethnic minority that protest against the discrimination and oppression they
experience. Xi Jinping defends Uyghur persecution as a justified response to the protests.iii The

69

less public, more significant reason for Uyghur persecution, however, is commerce. East
Turkestan, which makes up ⅙ of China's landmass, sits in an extremely lucrative location,
directly bordering eight countries,iv and is extremely rich in coal and oil reserves.v Due to East
Turkestan’s prime location and vast ecological wealth, China has begun a project--the Belt and
Road Initiative--which will connect China to other parts of Asia, Africa and Europe for
commerce. East Turkestan also holds 20% of China's energy reserves. It is rich in coal, oil and
natural gas. The region has 24 coal fields and geologists suggest that it is China's province with
the most energy potential.vi The region also has huge exploitation potential for renewable
energy forms. It is ranked second among all the provinces in the country for wind and solar
power potential. The region sitting at the same latitude as the Yangtze river, receives 15-25%
more radiation for solar power than other regions of China.vii The only thing standing in the way
of East Turkestan’s huge profit potential for China is the Uyghur population.

These factors have
incentivized the
Karamaye

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Chinese state to all
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riches. Many reports
date the start of

Kubai Coal Field
Photo 1: Map of fossil energy distribution in East Turkestan. Digital Image. Power.

Uyghur re-education
camps in 2017,

however information regarding the Uyghurs is often difficult to substantiate because China
restricts access to the area so severely.viii The Chinese government closely monitors East
Turkestan - the region has over 7,300 police monitoring stations, making it one of the most
policed areas in the world.ix China has confiscated all Uyghurs’ passports to inhibit their
movement, and placed cameras in every Uyghur neighborhood.x The Chinese government

70

surveils to such an extent that they are aware of whom everyone is socializing with, or if a
Uyghur puts gas in their neighbor’s car.xi In 2017, the Chinese government created an app that
was mandatory for all Uyghurs to download – the app takes fingerprints and scans devices for
illicit content, notifying the government of any objectionable material.xii Uyghurs are
imprisoned for anything that the Chinese government claims to be associated with religious
extremism, no matter how small and insignificant we might perceive it to be. The government
has a list of “75 behavioral indicators of religious extremism” that can land a Uyghur in prison.
Examples of these indicators include storing large amounts of food in one's house, or smoking
and drinking and then quitting the habit suddenly.xiii
The extent of Uyghur re-education camps is overwhelming: out of 10 million Uyghurs
living in East Turkistan, there are between one and three million persons imprisoned in 124-148
camps.xiv In a single week, China identified 24,000 Uyghurs that it deemed suspicious, sending
15,000 of those to re-education camps.xv According to Tohti, an ex-inmate of a re-education
camp, every Uyghur living abroad has a relative in a camp.xvi Uyghur camps are extremely
large: one camp called Debanchen holds at least 11,000 inmates if the facility uses single room
occupancy, making it the largest prison in the world. However, if the facility uses dormitory
style housing, it could hold up to 130,000 inmates. Within these camps, Uyghurs suffer hellish
treatment and conditions.xvii
China portrays
re-education camps as
benevolent
educational facilities.
However, in reality
they are prisons, and
many experts call them
concentration camps
because they are sites
Photo 2: Government social media post in April 2017 shows detainees in a political
education camp in Lop County, Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang. By Xinjiang Bureau of
Justice WeChat Account.

where people are
incarcerated not for

71

committing a crime but because of who they are, because they are a member of an oppressed
population. Camps are surrounded by barbed wire with guard posts along perimeters.
According to a Qelbinur, a woman who used to be a teacher at a camp, dormitory doors are
closed and locked at night and inmates are given a bucket as a toilet. During the day, inmates
are allowed at most three bathroom breaks, however they are all at preassigned times.xviii A
former inmate says women were given two minutes to use the restroom and if they took too
long, they get shocked in the back of the head with a baton.xix Inmates are only allowed one 15
minute shower per month. They are forced to sleep on the floors, sometimes with 50-60
detainees to a room, without mattresses.xx The only water that inmates are provided with is not
safe for drinking, and food portions are minimal. According to Qelbinur, inmates would arrive
in good health, but as time went on, many Uyghurs became so weak they could no longer
walk.xxi
Forced labor is another defining feature of Uyghur re-education camps. Uyghurs are
shipped to different regions of China to work in factories that double as prisons.xxii Uyghurs
produce products for at least 83 common brands, some of which are Nike, Apple, Samsung,
Gap and Volkswagen.xxiii These company prison factories are surveilled by police guard boxes
and barbed wire permitters. Inmates are forced to work under threat of detention, and
sometimes, Chinese officials will go to inmates' families homes to remind workers that
misconduct will result in familial punishment.xxiv Earlier this year, a 13 ton shipment coming from
East Turkestan containing hair products including weaves was seized at the US border. There is
speculation that the weaves were made of human hair, cut from Uyghur bodies.xxv Last year, AP
tried to visit one of the hair company’s factories in East Turkistan, but was turned away by
police. Reporters saw barbed wire, surveillance cameras and police guards.xxvi
The most common reason Uyghurs are sentenced to camps is for having what the
Chinese state defines as too many children. China aims to minimize and absorb the Uyghur
culture and population. Any Uyghur with more than three children poses a threat to this goal,
resulting in an extremely large fine, and if a Uyghur is unable to pay the fine, they are
sentenced to the camps.xxvii Some inmates are given decades long sentences for having too
many children. In camps, Uyghur woman are routinely subjected to forced pregnancy tests,

72

sterilization and abortions. Upon entering camps, women are forced to get IUDs or pregnancy
prevention shots. Seven former detainees said they felt dizzy and ill after being forcibly
inserted with an IUD. In 2014, 200,000 IUDs were inserted into Uyghur women’s bodies in East
Turkmenistan, and in 2018, that number rose to 330,000.xxviii According to Qelbinur, birth
control pills were baked into bread so that females were unaware that they were taking
contraceptives.xxix Multiple former female detainees said that after leaving camps, they got
tested and discovered that they were sterile. Female inmates are subjected to abortions, which
can be in the form of medical procedures, or as gruesome as detainees being repeatedly
kicked in the stomach during interrogations.xxx One woman who was subjected to this kind of
interrogation reports still having lower abdomen pain.

China's increasing sterilizations in Xinjang
Sterilizations per100,000
Xinjiang
200

150
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Photo 3: China’s increasing sterilizations in East Turkestan. Digital image. The Associated Press.

Uyghurs are subjected to a variety of heinous forms of torture, but one of the most
appalling ones is organ harvesting. The Chinese government has been systematically
harvesting organs from minority groups in China--including the Uyghurs--for years, and is still
doing so today.xxxi The procedures are done on live victims, and many die from the process.
The illegal organ harvesting industry is estimated to be worth about $1 billion annually.xxxii This
physical and economic exploitation is not only an unfathomably gruesome way to torture
minorities, but contributes to ethnic cleansing goals as well. People's lives and bodies are

73

monetized to the most extreme degree - with others profiting from the removal of body parts
and the mutilation of living persons.
While it is easy to turn a blind eye to, and feel disconnected from this small ethnic
group in a remote part of the world, most of us play a role in China's Uyghur erasure. If you are
the owner of an iPhone or a Samsung device, if you own a Nike product or have shopped at
Gap, you are contributing to this humanitarian crisis.xxxiii It is imperative that this information be
shared so that public anger and resistance push the Chinese government to cease these
human rights violations and mass atrocities.

Tibet

While Uyghur persecution has been
more of a recent phenomenon,
China has been persecuting and
imprisoning Tibetans for decades. In
detention centers, Tibetan
detainees are subjected to
inhumane treatment, forced labor
and atrocious living conditions.
Tibetans, like the Uyghurs, are a
minority ethnic group in China who
demonstrate against oppressive
Chinese laws.xxxiv The Chinese
government’s response to this

Photo 4: Map of China and occupied territories East Turkestan and Tibet.
Digital Image. Wikimedia Commons. Edited by Fabiana Lake.

resistance, and the fact that China has mining interests in Tibet, has been mass incarceration of
the Tibetans.xxxv

74

Imprisoned Tibetans live in squalor. Many carceral facilities only provide a tin can in the
corner of each cell as a latrine, and inmates are forced to use it in front of all cellmates.xxxvi The
prison cells and the inmates’ bodies are filthy: one inmate told an investigator that he was only
allowed to wash himself twice in five years. Excrement stains cell floors and inmates are not
given mattresses or bedding, and are forced to sleep on the soiled floors. In addition to the
filth, Tibetan prisoners have to brave cold winters without bedding, and with insufficient, dirty
clothing.xxxvii
Tibetan prisoners are given insufficient rations of inedible food. The food in Tibetan
prisons is far worse than food at other Chinese prisons. It is always dirty and often rotten,
containing dead insects. Some inmates even said they found feces and cigarette butts floating
in their food.xxxviii Soup is prepared in rusty oil drums, making it the color of rust. A former
Tibetan inmate says starvation was the worst part of detention: she was driven to eating the
leather off of her shoes just to stay alive.xxxix Not only was the food absolutely inedible, many
Tibetans had been beaten so brutally that they could barely digest anything, let alone what
they were served.xl Inmates are also given almost nothing to drink. The only liquids they are
served are tea and salty soup, making them even thirstier. One inmate shared, “we were so
dehydrated that often we could not even urinate. We had a container in our cell to hold our
urine but, even with 20 of us in the cell, we only had to empty it once a week… when we left
the cell we had to lean against the wall as we were so weak.” One inmate was so desperate
that he drank his own urine, and tried to eat his own feces.xli
Tibetan prison conditions and the mistreatment of inmates results in severe health
problems for detainees. Inmates are often beaten, raped and electrically shocked, leaving
them paralyzed, blind, deaf, unable to swallow food and with organ failure. One inmate lost all
of his teeth due to an electric cattle prod shock.xlii Almost every former Tibetan inmate said
they had their blood forcibly extracted, and that Chinese inmates had not experienced the
same bodily violation.xliii If inmates try to get treatment for an ailment, which often results from
torture and poor living conditions, they are met with severe repression. The minimal care
Tibetans do get is outdated and insufficient; medical facilities are only equipped with sleeping

75

pills and painkillers, which officials prescribe for any and every ailment. In general, however,
inmates get no treatment. One inmate was brutally beaten and had a nail stuck in his foot that
created a festering wound, yet he was not treated until near the point of death.xliv Another
inmate, Goshul Lobsnag, died at age 43 due to torture-related injuries and malnourishment. A
former inmate says half of the Tibetan prisoners were dead after a few years.xlv
Like the Uyghurs, the Tibetans are subjected to forced labor. Tibetan males often work
in heavy farming, mining or construction, while females clean toilets, tailor or sort wool. The
less fortunate work in greenhouses, which are characterized by sweltering heat, no ventilation,
and filled with chemicals that are sprayed on the plants. Others are forced to scoop human
feces out of toilets and apply them to agricultural fields as fertilizer. Inmates often work 12-hour
days in order to meet quotas, directly benefiting the state. Some inmates are even forced into
work after their sentences are complete, and are held in conditions very similar to those they
faced during imprisonment.xlvi
China’s interests in Tibet are twofold - mining and suppression of protest. China has an
interest in coal, copper, gold, lithium and water in the Tibetan Autonomous region.xlvii Mining
of each of these materials brings a host of environmental hazards. Coal, copper, gold and
lithium all generate waste that pollutes the surrounding water, air and soil, displaces Tibetan
farmers and destroys sacred Tibetan sites.xlviii Water is being mined from glaciers that are
receding at a more rapid pace than any other glacier in the world, so that western water
companies can advertise their products as containing rare Himalayan water.xlix Tibetans who
protest these practices by exercising their rights to free speech are arrested and imprisoned for
years. A Tibetan nun, Ngawang Sangdrol was imprisoned for publicly declaring “independent
Tibet, long live His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”l A-Nya Sendra is a Tibetan environmental activist
protesting mining, and for that they were arrested and sentenced to 7 years in prison.li Mass
incarceration of Tibetans is intended to create less resistance to Chinese Communist Party rule,
and creates an enslaved workforce, similar to the situation the Uyghurs face. Prior to Chairman
Xi Jinping's rule in 2012, both the Uyghurs and the Tibetans were allowed more autonomy and
freedom. However, Xi Jinping has tightened restrictions on ethnic and religious minorities,
aiming to increase assimilation and absorption of the non-Han Chinese.lii

76

Falun Gong

Yet another example of minority persecution is that of Falun Gong followers in China.
Falun Gong was introduced to the public in 1992 as a new form of Qigong, an exercise
focused on meditation and movement, which originated in China.liii Falun Gong was unique
from other Qigong practice because it was not only a form of movement, but also incorporated
“moral and spiritual teachings.”liv Because of Falun Gong’s unique, spiritual approach, the
practice conflicted with the atheist, Marxist orientation of the Chinese Communist Party. The
Chinese government began harassing the followers of Falun Gong in 1996, when Falun Gong
leadership refused to charge practitioners money to practice, as was newly mandated by the
Chinese state. In 1999, the Chinese Communist Party released a media campaign decrying the
practice as “dangerous ‘feudal superstition’”.lv
Following the government ban on the practice of Falun Gong in 1999, hundreds of
thousands of practitioners have been fired from their jobs, expelled from school, arrested and
detained.lvi It is estimated that 15% of those incarcerated in labor and re-education camps in
China are followers of Falun Gong. The abuses prisoners endure in these camps are
horrendous. Prisoners suffer physical and psychological torture, including forced labor,
brainwashing, rape and robbery. There have even been multiple cases of harvesting inmates’
organs while they are still alive.lvii Independent investigations have determined that between
the years 2000-2008, over 60,000 Falun Gong prisoners “were killed in the process of
extracting their organs for transplant.”lviii Before being subjected to this horrendous practice,
prisoners are “often forced to work up to 20 hours per day, producing- without pay- toys,
Christmas tree lights, chopsticks, and soccer balls for export. Those who refuse are tortured.”lix
The most commonly documented torture techniques include shocking with electric batons,
burning with irons, tying people’s bodies in painful positions for days, the use of chemical
injections, and submersion in water.lx Both men and women are subjected to heinous forms of
rape, sexual assault and abuse.lxi China is now 21 years into its campaign on the Falun Gong
religious minority, forcing practitioners to live in fear of the terrible human and environmental
injustices that await them if they are turned in to government officials.

77

Palestine
Disclaimer

We understand that the Israeli-Palestine conflict is highly fraught and controversial for many
people around the world. We would like to make clear that we fully reject anti-Semitism and
anti-Jewish oppression, and that our support for human rights and environmental justice is
what motivates this critical analysis of the conflict. We also must be clear that we reject any
suggestion that the actions of the state of Israel speak for individuals of the Jewish faith--such a
suggestion would itself be anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish. Rather, we seek to outline areas in
which the nation-state of Israel has utilized its political and structural power to annex lands from
Palestine, as well as hyper-police the West Bank in such a way that the United Nations has
identified this situation as a human rights crisis. While Hamas is officially in charge of the Gaza
Strip, Israel continues to influence the lives and success of Palestinians by controlling the
borders and ports of entry to Gaza, as well as many critical resources, like clean water.

This chapter focuses on politically powerful nations, and a range of conflicts in which they are
embroiled with people from non-majority ethnicities, religions, and nationalities. These
conflicts are tied together in this chapter through the themes of environmental injustice and
resource extraction. We do not intend to imply that citizens of these nations condone these
policies; on the contrary, we hope to identify injustices committed by these governments to
inform the broader public of these issues.

Background
The roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict date back to at least the 1880s, when
European and Russian Jewish immigrants first established themselves in the region, where the
majority of persons living there were Arabs and Bedouins. Tensions increased in 1948 upon
Israel’s declaration of independence after a bloody war that displaced an estimated 750,000
Arab Palestinians from their homes. The Six Day War of 1967 resulted in Israel annexing
regions of Syria, Egypt and the Jordanian West Bank. This war intensified the occupation of
Palestinian lands. The 1993 Oslo Accords set levels of Israeli rule over Palestine, ranging from

78

one area (A) being independent Palestine and another area (C) allowing full military and civilian
control.lxii Currently, area C is approximately 61% of the West Banklxiii, which means the West
bank is experiencing a de facto annexation by Israel. Palestinians are restricted in their daily
mobility; they are required to have a permit to enter Israel proper, as well as East Jerusalem,
which is supposed to be the capital of the future Palestinian state, and is also the 3rd holiest
site in Islam.lxiv
10

The persecution of
Palestinians is twofold - not
only are their everyday lives
severely restricted and

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monitored; they are also
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has diminished their access to Centanni. Located at http://www.polgeonow.com/
clean drinking water and a range of life-sustaining environmental conditions. In 2020,
Palestinians have faced additional oppression and strain in the face of COVID-19.lxv

Prison Conditions
Since the six day war in 1967, it is estimated that Israel has imprisoned 1 million
Palestinians, and in 2017, around 6,200 Palestinian political prisoners were being held in Israeli
jails.lxvi According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding, a “non-profit organization that
offers journalists fact analysis, experts, and digital resources about Palestine and Palestinians,”
the Israeli government not only imprisons adults, but hundreds of children every year as well.lxvii

79

Officials have been reported forcing their way into people's homes at night and taking children
so as to not face resistance by parents. They then violently interrogate them and force them to
sign confessions in Hebrew, which the children do not understand.lxviii Once incarcerated,
Palestinians face multiple environmental injustices. Food quality in Israeli jails is poor, and only
enough to satisfy half of the inmates’ nutritional needs. Facilities are filthy and insect-infested,
and latrines are generally either a hole in the ground or a bucket. Not surprisingly, an
estimated 25% of Palestinian inmates get sick in prison, despite the fact that most entered
while young and in good health.lxix
When faced with overcrowding in their prisons, Israeli officials decided to move a
number of Palestinian detainees outside.lxx These living quarters are oftentimes nothing more
than metal containers or tents, which makes it difficult to endure the temperature extremes of
the region. Inmates are typically only given thin mattresses that lay on the ground to sleep
on.lxxi Another cruel restriction is that prisoners are not allowed to change their clothing they
were arrested in, even if it was a violent arrest during which their clothing was covered in
blood. Prisons do not provide an adequate amount of soap or hygiene products. This adds to
the unsanitary conditions in these prisons and increases the spread of illness and disease.lxxii
Additionally, most Palestinian prisoners are held in Israel proper, which Palestinians are banned
from entering, and so they cannot visit incarcerated family members. Israel also bans families
from giving inmates any supplemental items, like clothing, bedding, and hygiene products.lxxiii
However, international law stipulates that individuals from an occupied land can only be
detained within that occupied territory.lxxiv This means that it is unlawful for Israel to hold
Palestinian prisoners within Israeli prisons. Still, 17 of the 18 prisons Palestinians are jailed in are
located within Israel.lxxv International law also dictates that prisoners must be allowed to receive
visitors at regular intervals, another rule Israel has ignored. On November 4, 2020, the Fourth
Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations decried Israel’s disregard for these
two policies and more. The General Assembly (GA) demanded “Israel cooperate with the
Special Committee and requests that the latter continue to investigate Israeli policies and
practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, especially its violations of the Geneva
Convention.”lxxvi The GA also requested investigations of “... the treatment and status of

80

thousands of prisoners and detainees, including children, women and elected
representatives...” detained by Israel.lxxvii It is important to note that the United States voted
against these resolutions and many others. By doing so, the United States continues to turn a
blind eye to the injustices Israel forces upon Palestinian prisoners, even as nations around the
world call for change and accountability.

Coronavirus
We as a global community are experiencing many challenges in the face of this
unprecedented coronavirus pandemic. The incarcerated community is, in many ways,
experiencing the worst of it. Since incarcerated people are reliant on others for sanitation,
social distancing measures and medical care, they are vulnerable to neglect. Palestinians are
experiencing a lack of proper COVID-19 protections in prison. In fact, according to the Israeli
Supreme court, “Palestinians held in prison are no different than family members or flatmates
living in the same home”, ruling that they do not have the right to social distancing.lxxviii This
ruling is problematic on multiple accounts. Foremost is the blatant racism of using stereotypes
and living conditions to rule that Palestinian detainees deserve to be treated differently than
Israeli prisoners. Additionally, Israeli prisons holding Palestinians are known for overcrowding,
filthy cells and medical negligence.lxxix Cells are generally no bigger than three square meters,
yet they hold upwards of six to ten prisoners. Israeli prison officials do not provide sufficient
personal hygiene products. This is both dangerous and cruel because in the midst of a
pandemic, medical officials deem access to personal protective wear, hand soap and hand
sanitizer necessary. Yet, inmates are receiving none. The only precautions that Israeli prisons
are taking, at the time this source was published, is putting infected inmates in small, filthy
solitary confinement cells to quarantine.lxxx Many of the Palestinian prisoners are in the
demographic most susceptible to COVID-19, being middle to older in age, and having preexisting health conditions. According to Addemeer, a prisoner's rights group, from 2005 to
2020, at least 17 inmates have died as a direct result of medical negligence. Inmates who have
serious health conditions are generally only given generic painkillers as treatment.lxxxi Due to

81

these trends of mistreatment and neglect, COVID-19 in Israeli prisons could have disastrous
effects.

Occupation as a Form of “Open Air” Prison
People across the world have experienced new governmental regulations in the face of
the global Coronavirus pandemic. One Palestinian writer compares these restrictions--a “new
normal” for most of us--to their daily life as a Palestinian living in occupied territory. lxxxii
Palestinians experience frequent checkpoints, mandatory curfews, and the inability to seek
international travel through Israel’s seaports or the Ben Gurion International Airport. This writer
was even given an individualized ban preventing them from leaving the West Bank for any
reason, not even to visit their sick mother in occupied East Jerusalem.lxxxiii The Gaza Strip, home
to over two million Palestinians, has been under an Israeli military blockade for more than 12
years, “making it the biggest open-air prison in the world.”lxxxiv However, unlike the restrictions
that millions of people around the world are facing from governments regarding Coronavirus in
order to ensure public safety, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories experience a brutal,
heavily policed life as a routine form of oppression that predates the pandemic.
In addition to living in heavily policed areas, Israel has an “open-fire policy” which
allows their military the use of lethal force on civilians if they feel threatened. Thousands of
Palestinians have been killed within the Occupied Territories over the past 12 years under this
policy as a result of enforcement activities like crowd-control. Others were killed in bouts of
fighting between Israel and Palestine, and thousands more have been injured by Israeli security
forces.lxxxv The open-fire policy highlights how little the Israeli government values the lives of
the occupied Palestinian people. The General Assembly of the United Nations denounced
Israel’s use of force against journalists, humanitarian personnel, and the people of the
Occupied Palestinian Territory as another act of breaking international law.lxxxvi

Water
Over the past 50 years Israel has weaponized water to control, oppress, and expel
Palestinians from areas within the Occupied Territories. When Israel first occupied the West

82

Bank in 1967, they issued military orders allowing the Israeli army to seize control of water and
land resources.lxxxvii Since then, Israel has strategically routed water resources away from
Palestine. Nearly 83% of the aquifers in the West Bank have been diverted to Israel or Israeli
settlements within the West Bank, leaving Palestinians with just 17% of their historic water
supply.lxxxviii In addition, the Israeli military has frequently destroyed water wells and pipelines,
preventing Palestinians from having reasonable access to water and farmers from having
adequate supplies for their crops. For example, in the past decade alone:

•

Between 2011 and 2013 “the Israeli army destroyed 205 Palestinian water and
sanitation structures: 92 cisterns, 46 toilets/sanitary units, 33 water tanks, 22 wells, 8
pipelines, 4 springs.”lxxxix

•

After Israel’s war on Gaza in 2014, more than 50% of the water infrastructure was left
unusable and over 1 million residents were left without access to running water.xc

•

In 2017, Israeli soldiers escorted and directed construction crews and bulldozers to
destroy the water pipelines of the Village of Bardala in the West Bank, leaving 3,500
residents without access to water.xci

•

And most recently, in April 2020, Israeli soldiers responded to peaceful protests by
shooting holes in the rooftop water containers of villagers in Kafr Qaddum. xcii This is
especially heinous, since movement to neighboring towns, even for water, is
restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and it is costly for villagers to repair their
water tanks.

Israel also has the ability to approve or deny Palestinian request to drill a new irrigation
well, due to Israel’s 1967 Military Order 158.xciii It has been incredibly difficult for Palestinians to
receive approval to dig a new well or improve existing wells, while Israeli permitting requests
are frequently approved. Israel demolished over 50 water and sanitation structures in the first
six months of 2016, on the grounds that they did not have proper Israeli permits.xciv As a result,
Palestinians have access to about 73 liters of water per person per day, leaving them short of
the World Health Organization’s minimum standard of 100 liters per person per day.xcv This is

83

not due to a shortage in the area, as the average Israeli citizen consumes approximately 300
liters per day.xcvi
Not only are Palestinians forced to live without access to water within the confines of
their land; the continued conflict has left Palestine’s water quality in a dangerous state as well.
It is believed that up to 95% of Gaza’s two million residents lack access to clean drinking water,
while 23% live without sanitation services.xcvii In 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO)
found that chloride and nitrates in the Palestinian water supply exceeded the acceptable limits
for human health by 5-10 times.xcviii The conflict has also left water and waste-water treatment
facilities in serious decline. The WHO estimates that Gaza’s contaminated water supply
accounts for nearly 26% of all disease there, with 50% of children suffering from water-related
infections.xcix
Human rights groups have reported that Gaza’s water treatment plants have been
severely limited by the electricity crisis and that, as a result, untreated or partially treated
wastewater is being released into the ocean near Gaza at a rate of 108,000 cubic meters/day in
2017.c About half of Gaza’s beaches are now closed to the public, because they have been
contaminated by wastewater. This fact impacts both citizens who are unable to access their
environment recreationally without risking their health, but also fisherfolk who relied on the
coastal waters for income and food. Although the Oslo Accords stipulated that Palestinians had
access to fish off the coast of Gaza as far as 20 miles from shore, they have more recently been
restricted to a range of about 3-6 miles, or risk having their boats seized by the Israeli
government.ci This restricted zone keeps fishermen much closer to the coast, and as a result,
relegates them to the most contaminated coastal areas. Since 2000, employment in the fishing
industry has declined by 66%, likely as a result of the reduced access to fishing areas.cii
Though Israel is not the government responsible for Gaza, they hold the unique
geographic position to control the land and sea ports into Gaza. As a result, they have played a
critical role in preventing supplies for critical services like wastewater plant construction, as well
as humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Additionally, Israel holds the political and structural
power to approve or deny permitting requests that Palestinians rely on to improve their
conditions. For example, Israel has rejected 26 out of 30 Palestinian proposals to develop new

84

wastewater treatment plants since 1995, and only one of the four approved plants had been
built as of 2016.ciii Preventing Palestinians from digging new wells or rebuilding water
infrastructure and wastewater treatment facilities is an unacceptable act of oppression and
environmental injustice. Though Israel exerts its control of water differently from the West Bank
to Gaza, it is clear that they have weaponized water as a tool for oppression. We argue that
Israel is engaging in the extraction-nexus, because of its aggressive colonization of the water
resources within the region. This term attempts to encompass those powerful groups or
governments that would oppress and imprison others, restrict their access to their own natural
resources, and take these resources for the benefit of the oppressor. We hope to bring
attention to this important issue as climate change continues to intensify and powerful groups
may seek to engage in the extraction-nexus to benefit themselves. We aim to amplify the
United Nation’s calls for increased security of Israel’s actions towards Palestine and we hope
they look into this issue as well in the future.

Conclusion

The widespread persecution of minorities has plagued our world for thousands of years. In this
chapter, we examine only a few cases, but the reality is that persecution is all too common.
Groups are targeted based on their religious, cultural or ethnic identities and are then
incarcerated and subjected to despicable environmental injustices. Powerful groups take
advantage of more vulnerable ones in order to extract resources, as seen in the cases of Tibet
and East Turkmenistan. These cases also highlight the pressing issue of imprisoning a people
and seizing control of their natural resources, what we have identified as the incarcerationextraction nexus. Capitalist expansion also fuels this persecution, because an incarcerated
population creates a malleable workforce. This workforce makes countless products for
consumers around the world to purchase at low prices because the forced labor goes unpaid.
Other cases of persecution are motivated largely by colonialism and land expansion, as
observed with the Palestinian struggle. We as global citizens have a moral obligation to be
aware of this persecution and to take a stance against these injustices. Buying products that are
not made using forced labor may require additional effort and awareness, but this is a

85

responsibility we have as members of the global community, to take a stand in support of
human rights and environmental justice whenever and wherever threats against them exist.

i

Rachel Vandenbrink, “‘Uyghur’ or ‘Uighur’?,” Radio Free Asia, September 10, 2010,
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/uyghur-spelling-09062010161733.html.
ii
Mehmet Tohti, “Uyghurs: Victims of 21st Century Concentration Camps,” The Diplomat, May 18, 2018,
https://thediplomat.com/2018/05/uyghurs-victims-of-21st-century-concentration-camps/.
iii
Fergus Shiel and Sasha Chavkin, “China Cables: Who Are the Uighurs and Why Mass Detention?,” ICIJ
(blog), November 24, 2019, https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/china-cables-who-are-theuighurs-and-why-mass-detention/.
iv
Tohti, “Uyghurs.”
v
John Sudworth, “China’s Hidden Camps,” BBC News, 10 2018,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/China_hidden_camps.
vi
Thomas Overton, “The Energy Industry in Xinjiang, China: Potential, Problems, and Solutions,” POWER
Magazine (blog), January 1, 2016, https://www.powermag.com/energy-industry-xinjiang-china-potentialproblems-solutions-web/.
vii
Overton.
viii
Vicky Xiuzhong Xu et al., “Uyghurs for Sale,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute, January 3, 2020,
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale.
ix
Explainer: Why Xinjiang Is so Important to China, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUgw0tdyBs.
x
John Oliver, China & Uighurs: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), Last Week Tonight, 2020,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17oCQakzIl8.
xi
Oliver.
xii
Explainer.
xiii
Oliver, China & Uighurs.
xiv
Bill Gertz, “Network of Chinese Concentration Camps for Uighurs Uncovered,” Washington Free
Beacon (blog), July 15, 2019, https://freebeacon.com/national-security/network-of-chinese-concentrationcamps-for-uighurs-uncovered/; Keir Simmons, “Inside Chinese Camps Thought to Be Detaining a Million
Muslims,” NBC News, October 4, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/inside-chinese-campsthought-detain-million-muslim-uighurs-n1062321.
xv
Oliver, China & Uighurs.
xvi
Tohti, “Uyghurs.”
xvii
Sudworth, “China’s Hidden Camps.”
xviii
“SHIT YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT on Instagram: ‘Trigger Warning: Rape, Violence, Genocide. This
Is a School Teachers Experience in a Concentration Camp in Xinjiang China. This Is…,’” Instagram,
accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CEunb2LgkHV/.
xix
Oliver, China & Uighurs.
xx
Oliver.
xxi
“SHIT YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT on Instagram: ‘Trigger Warning: Rape, Violence, Genocide. This
Is a School Teachers Experience in a Concentration Camp in Xinjiang China. This Is…,’” Instagram,
accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CEunb2LgkHV/.
xxii
Xu et al., “Uyghurs for Sale.”
xxiii
Xu et al.
xxiv
Xu et al.
xxv
Allison Gordon CNN, “13-Ton Shipment of Human Hair, Likely from Chinese Prisoners, Seized,” CNN,
accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/us/china-hair-uyghur-cpb-trnd/index.html.
xxvi
Martha Mendoz, “U.S. Customs Seizes Shipment of Human Hair Weaves From Prisoners in Chinese
Internment Camps,” Time, July 1, 2020, https://time.com/5862372/china-prison-camps-hair-weavesuighurs/.

86

xxvii

The Associated Press, “China Cuts Uighur Births with IUDs, Abortion, Sterilization,” AP NEWS, June
29, 2020, https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c.
xxviii
The Associated Press.
xxix
“SHIT YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT -- Instagram.”
xxx
The Associated Press, “China Cuts Uighur Births with IUDs, Abortion, Sterilization.”
xxxi
Zak Doffman, “China Killing Prisoners To Harvest Organs For Transplant: BMC Report Accuses China
Of ‘Falsifying’ Data,” Forbes, accessed August 18, 2020,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/11/16/china-covers-up-killing-of-prisoners-to-harvestorgans-for-transplant-new-report/.
xxxii
Doffman.
xxxiii
Tohti, “Uyghurs.”
xxxiv
“Torture and Impunity: 29 Cases of Tibetan Political Prisoners,” International Campaign for Tibet
(blog), February 26, 2015, https://savetibet.org/torture-and-impunity-29-cases-of-tibetan-politicalprisoners/.
xxxv
“Raiding Tibet’s Resources | Free Tibet,” accessed August 16, 2020, https://freetibet.org/resources.
xxxvi
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, “Behind Bars: Prison Conditions in Tibet (1998),”
1998, https://www.scribd.com/document/128601072/Behind-Bars-1998.
xxxvii
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
xxxviii
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
xxxix
Laogai - Forced Labor in Chinas Gulag’s. Short Clip 2, 2019,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Tu-5KhNbw.
xl
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, “Behind Bars: Prison Conditions in Tibet (1998).”
xli
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
xlii
“Torture and Impunity.”
xliii
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, “Behind Bars: Prison Conditions in Tibet (1998).”
xliv
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
xlv
Laogai - Forced Labor in Chinas Gulag’s. Short Clip 2.
xlvi
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, “Behind Bars: Prison Conditions in Tibet (1998).”
xlvii
“Raiding Tibet’s Resources | Free Tibet.”
xlviii
“Raiding Tibet’s Resources | Free Tibet.”
xlix
“Raiding Tibet’s Resources | Free Tibet.”
l
“Political Prisoners,” International Campaign for Tibet (blog), accessed August 13, 2020,
https://savetibet.org/why-tibet/political-prisoners/.
li
“UN Experts Call on China to Release Tibetan Nomad and Environment Activist, A-Nya Sengdra | Free
Tibet,” accessed August 17, 2020, gelvin.
lii
Chris Buckley, “A Tibetan Tried to Save His Language. China Handed Him 5 Years in Prison.,” The New
York Times, May 22, 2018, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/world/asia/tibetan-activisttashi-wangchuk-sentenced.html.
liii
Falun Dafa Club, “Persecution in China | Falun Dafa Club,” Boston University, accessed November 28,
2020, http://sites.bu.edu/dafa/persecution-in-china/.
liv
James Griffiths, “Why China Fears the Falun Gong,” The World, July 14, 2014,
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-14/why-china-fears-falun-gong.
lv
Griffiths.
lvi
Falun Dafa Infocenter, “Persecution in China: Falun Gong | Why Is Persecuted?,” FalunInfo, October 4,
2019, https://faluninfo.net/why-is-falun-gong-is-persecuted-in-china/; Falun Dafa Infocenter, “Violent
Suppression of 100 Million,” FalunInfo, September 23, 2020, https://flinfo.duckdns.org/violentsuppression-of-100-million-people/.
lvii
Falun Dafa Infocenter, “Persecution in China.”
lviii
Falun Dafa Infocenter.
lix
Falun Dafa Infocenter, “Violent Suppression of 100 Million.”
lx
Falun Dafa Infocenter, “Statistics & Evidence Related to Falun Gong.,” FalunInfo, September 13, 2017,
https://faluninfo.net/key-statistics-related-to-falun-gong/.
lxi
Friends of Falun Gong, “The Unprecedented Persecution,” Friends of Falun Gong (blog), 2020,
http://fofg.org/the-unprecedented-persecution/; Falun Dafa Infocenter, “Violent Suppression of 100
Million”; Falun Dafa Infocenter, “Statistics & Evidence Related to Falun Gong.”
lxii
James L. Gelvin, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, n.d.).

87

lxiii

“Planning Policy in the West Bank,” B’Tselem, accessed October 5, 2020,
https://www.btselem.org/planning_and_building.
lxiv
Gelvin, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War.
lxv
Mike Merryman-Lotze, “Stopping COVID-19 in Palestine,” American Friends Service Committee, April
1, 2020, https://www.afsc.org/blogs/news-and-commentary/stopping-covid-19-palestine; “Coronavirus:
Palestinian Inmates Fear for Their Lives in Filthy and Crowded Israeli Jails,” Middle East Eye, accessed
November 19, 2020, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-israel-jails-palestinian-inmates-fearlives-filthy-and-crowded.
lxvi
The Institute for Middle East Understanding, “Israel’s Mass Incarceration of Palestinians | IMEU,” The
Institute for Middle East Understanding, accessed September 28, 2020, https://imeu.org/article/israelsmass-incarceration-of-palestinians.
lxvii
The Institute for Middle East Understanding, “About Us | IMEU,” The Institute for Middle East
Understanding, accessed November 29, 2020, https://imeu.org/about; The Institute for Middle East
Understanding, “Israel’s Mass Incarceration of Palestinians | IMEU.”
lxviii
The Institute for Middle East Understanding, “Israel’s Mass Incarceration of Palestinians | IMEU.”
lxix
Prison Insider, “Prisons in Israel, Palestine and Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Prison Insider, 2017,
https://www.prison-insider.com/countryprofile/prisonsinisraelpalestine?s=le-quotidien.
lxx
“Palestinian Detainees to Be Moved to Tents Due to Overcrowding – – IMEMC News,” accessed
November 19, 2020, https://imemc.org/article/palestinian-detainees-to-be-moved-to-tents-due-toovercrowding/.
lxxi
Prison Insider, “Prisons in Israel, Palestine and Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
lxxii
Prison Insider.
lxxiii
The Institute for Middle East Understanding, “Israel’s Mass Incarceration of Palestinians | IMEU”;
Prison Insider, “Prisons in Israel, Palestine and Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
lxxiv
Magdalena Mughrabi, “Israel Must End ‘Unlawful and Cruel’ Policies towards Palestinian Prisoners,”
Amnesty International, April 13, 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/04/israel-must-endunlawful-and-cruel-policies-towards-palestinian-prisoners/.
lxxv
Prison Insider, “Prisons in Israel, Palestine and Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
lxxvi
General Assembly- Fourth Committee, “Fourth Committee Approves 12 Draft Resolutions on Israeli
Practices in Occupied Arab Lands, Palestine Refugees, as It Continues Joint General Debate | Meetings
Coverage and Press Releases,” United Nations, November 4, 2020,
https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/gaspd724.doc.htm.
lxxvii
General Assembly- Fourth Committee.
lxxviii
“Coronavirus: Israeli Court Rules Palestinian Prisoners Have No Right to Social Distancing,” Middle
East Eye, accessed July 27, 2020, http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-israel-supreme-courtpalestinians-prisoners-no-rights-social-distancing.
lxxix
“Coronavirus.”
lxxx
“Coronavirus.”
lxxxi
“Coronavirus.”
lxxxii
Laith Abu Zeyad, “I Am under a Lockdown, but Not Because of the Coronavirus,” ALJAZEERA, May
27, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/lockdown-coronavirus-200522135724647.html.
lxxxiii
Zeyad.
lxxxiv
Zeyad.
lxxxv
“Open-Fire Policy,” B’Tselem, November 11, 2017, https://www.btselem.org/firearms.
lxxxvi
General Assembly- Fourth Committee, “Fourth Committee Approves 12 Draft Resolutions on Israeli
Practices in Occupied Arab Lands, Palestine Refugees, as It Continues Joint General Debate | Meetings
Coverage and Press Releases.”
lxxxvii
Amnesty International, “Troubled Waters - Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water,” Water Is a
Human Right, 2009.
lxxxviii
If Americans Knew, “Water in Palestine,” If Americans Knew, accessed October 5, 2020,
https://ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/water.html.
lxxxix
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Data on Demolition and
Displacement in the West Bank,” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,
November 25, 2020,
https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiMmJkZGRhYWQtODk0MS00MWJkLWI2NTktMDg1NGJlMGNiY2
Y3IiwidCI6IjBmOWUzNWRiLTU0NGYtNGY2MC1iZGNjLTVlYTQxNmU2ZGM3MCIsImMiOjh9.

88

xc

Fanack Water, “Gaza’s Water Crisis,” Fanack Water, September 15, 2015,
https://water.fanack.com/specials/gaza-water-crisis/; Abeer Abu Shawish, “Palestinians in Gaza Are
Drinking Contaminated Water,” Mondoweiss, March 22, 2016,
https://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/palestinians-in-gaza-are-drinking-contaminated-water-from-their-sinks/.
xci
Middle East Monitor, “3,500 Palestinians without Water as Israel Destroys Water Pipelines,” Middle
East Monitor, April 28, 2017, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170428-3500-palestinian-withoutwater-as-israel-destroys-water-pipelines/.
xcii
“Even during a Pandemic: Soldiers Shoot Holes in Water Tanks at Kafr Qadum,” B’Tselem, May 27,
2020,
https://www.btselem.org/firearms/20200527_soldiers_shoot_holes_in_water_tanks_at_kafr_qadum.
xciii
Amnesty International, “The Occupation of Water,” November 29, 2017,
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/.
xciv
Camilla Corradin, “Israel: Water as a Tool to Dominate Palestinians,” June 23, 2016,
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/6/23/israel-water-as-a-tool-to-dominate-palestinians.
xcv
Amnesty International, “The Occupation of Water.”
xcvi
Amnesty International.
xcvii
The World Health Organization, “Report of Field Assessment of Health Conditions in Occupied
Palestine Territories: Ch. 6. Water, Food and Livelihood,” United Nations, April 2015,
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-202027/.
xcviii
The World Health Organization.
xcix
The World Health Organization.
c
United Nations Country Team in the Occupied Palestinain Territory Report, “Gaza Ten Years Later: Ch.
5. Basic Infrastructure,” July 2017, https://www.un.org/unispal/document/gaza-ten-years-later-un-countryteam-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-report/.
ci
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, “The Besieged Palestinian Agricultural Sector,”
2015.
cii
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
ciii
The World Health Organization, “Report of Field Assessment of Health Conditions in Occupied
Palestine Territories: Ch. 6. Water, Food and Livelihood.”

Photos, Graphics and Figures:
Title Page: Image of barbed wire atop security fence. By Michael Waters
https://theoutline.com/post/5410/toxic-prisons-fayette-tacoma-contaminated?zd=1&zi=2jjfikhz
Photo 1: Map of fossil energy distribution in East Turkestan. Digital Image. Power. 1 January 2016,
https://www.powermag.com/energy-industry-xinjiang-china-potential-problems-solutions-web/.
Photo 2: Government social media post in April 2017 shows detainees in a political education camp in Lop County,
Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang. By Xinjiang Bureau of Justice WeChat Account.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/20/more-evidence-chinas-horrifi
Photo 3: China’s increasing sterilizations in East Turkestan. Digital image. The Associated Press. 28 June 2020,
https://apnews.com/article/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c
Photo 4: Map of China and occupied territories East Turkestan and Tibet. Digital Image. Wikimedia Commons.
Edited by Fabiana Lake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan.
Photo 5: Map of Israel and Palestine. Map by Evan Centanni, incorporating base map by Koen Adams. 1 July 2020.
https://www.polgeonow.com/search/label/palestine

89

A Path Forward:
Global Success in Decriminalization,
Prison Reform and Re-entry to Society

By: Elijah Baker

90

The previous chapters of this report have synthesized the origins and evolution of
prisons and jails in the United States, and identified key areas in need of reform. In this chapter
we consider some of the current shortcomings within the U.S. carceral system, and compare
them to a number of other countries that have made substantive improvements in these same
areas. We highlight how environmental justice is inextricably linked to the prison industrial
complex, consider options that support the current calls for decriminalization and
decarceration, as well as options that reduce long-term costs associated with prisons.
Ultimately, this is a call for folks from all sides to work to address these systemic challenges.
First, let us examine the last 6­0 years of policing and legislation to understand how the
U.S. prison system has evolved. From 1960-1990, crime rates in Finland, Germany, and the
United States were nearly identical.i These three countries began to diverge after President
Reagan passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986, continuing President Nixon’s infamous “War
on Drugs”. Shortly thereafter, President Clinton passed the Habitual Offender Laws, also
known as the Three-Strikes Laws. These legislative powerhouses dramatically transformed the
state of policing in the United States. They defined dozens of new crimes and sentencing
became far more severe, making it incredibly challenging for an individual who hits their “third
strike” to receive a punishment other than a life sentence.ii Decade after decade, the amount
of incarcerated people per capita increased until the United States held the most inmates in
the world, by far. In 1972, there were less than 350,000 persons imprisoned in the United
States. Today, there are approximately 2.2 million inmates, with 46.1% of the offenses related
to drugs.iii This is not normal outside of the United States.iv This indicates that policing and
legislation within the U.S. are largely to blame for our massive rise in incarceration.
In 2018, The Sentencing Project wrote the Report to the United Nations on Racial
Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System. They show that, not only is the U.S. the nation
with the highest incarceration rate per capita, but that our policing and sentencing policies are
perpetuating racial disparities within our criminal justice system. Though Black Americans and
Latinos made up just 29% of the U.S. population, they accounted for 56% of those incarcerated
in the U.S. prison system.v They write that, “Of the 277,000 people imprisoned nationwide for a
drug offense, over half (56%) are African American or Latino.” In addition, “Nearly half (48%) of

91

the 206,000 people serving life and “virtual life” prison sentences are African American and
another 15% are Latino”.vi
These are more than just statistics. These numbers highlight the vastly unequal ground
that people of color stand on in the United States when it comes to policing and incarceration.
The policing policies of the Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton Administrations have deliberately
targeted our lower-income communities and our communities of color in particular. In recent
years, the civil rights movement in the United States has resurfaced in the form of the Black
Lives Matter movement, and calls have gone out for the defunding of police departments and
decarceration within our prison system. In line with these calls for justice and action, we have
identified four broad areas for prison reform as they apply specifically to the United States:

1)

Reconsidering jailable offenses

2)

Reconsidering living conditions in prisons

3)

Reconsidering how we treat former convicts once released

4)

Reconsidering “opportunities” in prison

The case studies below reveal that decriminalization, prison reform, and, ultimately,
decarceration, are all possible, and often bring about significant positive results for society.
There are many models of prison reform, and each has its own costs and benefits. This is not an
exhaustive list. In addition, it is important to note that many of these systems were forced to
adapt under intense local or international pressure. We believe it will be the same for the
United States.

Reconsidering what constitutes a jailable offense: The decriminalization of drugs

In the Netherlands, it is illegal for individuals to produce, possess, or sell soft drugs, like
marijuana. However, the Dutch government operates under a “Toleration Policy” towards
marijuana, meaning they will not prosecute individuals who purchase and use marijuana-based
products in regulated coffee shops, or those who have less than 5 grams or 5 plants on their
person or at home.vii This approach has allowed the Dutch government to separate the markets

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for soft drugs and hard drugs, decreasing the likelihood that someone purchasing marijuana is
introduced to more dangerous drugs, and keeping people safe by participating at home or in
public coffee shops without fear of prosecution.viii
Portugal has gone even further than a “toleration policy” and decriminalized all drugs in
2001, making it the first country in the world to do so.ix Prior to this ruling the country had seen
a massive uptick in the use of dangerous drugs, like heroin, reporting that 1 in 10 people were
users in the late 1980’s.x The country had approached drug use similarly to the United States
and issued harsh sentences for law breakers.xi As a result of these policies, by the late 1990’s
nearly half of all inmates in Portugal’s jails were serving time for drug-related offenses. Officials
realized something needed to change. “It made much more sense for us to treat drug addicts
as patients who needed help, not as criminals.” - João Goulãoxii
Under the new reforms around drug use, dealers who were caught would still be sent to
prison, but anyone caught with “less than a 10-day supply of any drug” would instead be given
a fine or be sent to a commission hearing, paneled by a doctor, lawyer, and a social worker.
The commission would ensure that people knew about treatment options, harm reduction, and
medical services, and worked to understand whether the relationship the user had with drugs
was healthy or not.xiii By decriminalizing drugs, the government allowed for many different
services and resources, from areas like health, employment, and housing, to pool their
resources and expertise to better serve their communities.xiv As a result of these policies, the
number of people held in prison for drug offenses dropped by 20% between 1999 and 2013. It
is important to note that these policies, which have survived liberal and conservative
governments alike, were only enacted because of a massive cultural shift around drug use. The
population of Portugal overwhelmingly supported a health-centered approach to drug use
after seeing how ineffective a criminalized approach was.
By taking bold steps, the Dutch and Portuguese governments were able to greatly
reduce their prison populations and also positively impact their communities, by ensuring that
people received treatment, rather than imprisonment, for using drugs. This policy and cultural
shift have allowed families to stay together and for households to earn a greater income
without users being imprisoned. In addition, decriminalization allows people who know they

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have a drug problem to openly seek help, without fear of retaliation and imprisonment.
However, in the United States, the failed war on drugs is still ongoing.

r

“In 2016, 587,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana possession, more than
for all violent crimes combined.”xv

Is this system working the way that we want it to in America? There are growing
examples of countries that have reduced sentencing for possession of certain drugs
(Netherlands), countries that have legalized marijuana for recreational use (Uruguay), and
countries that have decriminalized drug use to help reduce rates of addiction (Portugal).xvi The
strict criminalization of all drugs and the fear of long prison sentences in the United States
pushes these markets underground where they cannot be regulated. On the other hand,
governments that choose to regulate the use of drugs allow them to keep these activities out
and in the open, which helps improve the likelihood that people are being safe, and increases
the ability of users to seek help.
It is important to acknowledge that there is already a growing interest in the United
States to reduce sentences for crimes related to marijuana possession. Julie Gunnigle--a
candidate who (unsuccessfully) ran for Arizona’s Maricopa County Attorney in 2020--announced
she would throw out pending cases and no longer prosecute marijuana-based offenses if
elected.xvii In October 2020, Jared Polis, the Governor of the state of Colorado, offered a full
pardon to all prisoners convicted for possession of 1 ounce or less of marijuana.xviii Most
impressive of all, in November 2020, voters in Oregon decriminalized the use of all drugs. They
voted in favor of Measure 110, the Drug Decriminalization and Addiction Treatment Initiative,
which seeks to change the narrative around drug use in Oregon and to offer support services
for users instead of imprisonment.xix These examples highlight the growing acceptance that the
War on Drugs has criminalized marijuana in an imbalanced way. It is past time for other states
that have legalized marijuana for recreational use to follow suit and pardon prisoners as
Colorado has done. It is also time for the U.S. at large to consider its stance on marijuana on a
broader scale. It is clear that our prison system has a problem; to reiterate, more folks were

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arrested in 2016 for crimes relating to marijuana than for all violent crimes combined.
Decriminalizing marijuana and other drugs would help reduce our prison population and begin
healing communities that have been damaged by the War on Drugs. It is time we take a
different stance. We need to re-evaluate the dangers once believed to be associated with
marijuana and adopt an attitude of support for our fellow citizens who would benefit from
social services rather than criminalization.
We conclude that, just as Colorado and countries from around the world have done, it
is time to decriminalize sentencing for marijuana in the U.S. While the decriminalization of
drugs sounds like a radical idea, a 2014 national poll by the Pew Research Center showed that
the majority of U.S. citizens, 67%, believed the government should “focus on providing
treatment for those who use illegal drugs, like cocaine and heroin.”xx As highlighted above, the
criminalization of marijuana and the use of three-strikes laws most frequently impacts
communities of color. We hope to amplify the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement
and call for increased funding for social services in place of policing as it relates to mental
health crises and drug use.

Reconsidering living conditions

Living conditions dictate so much of an inmate's experience while incarcerated, and
they play a critical role in how inmates view themselves as people and how they prepare to reenter civilian life. In the United States, many prisons are overcrowded, lack trained social
workers to help inmates, and are designed to look and feel like a cage. Both Belize and the
Dominican Republic have had incredible success with recent prison reforms that have
addressed how inmates live and are treated within prison.
In 2002, Belize contracted the Kolbe Foundation, a Catholic-oriented NGO, to manage
that nation’s prison system, and they have done so ever since. Prior to this transition, prisons
lacked key resources and prisoners lived in abysmal conditions. In one case, Belize Central
Prison lacked potable water and a functioning sewer system. It was common for the prison staff
to abuse inmates and nearly 2/3 of the prisoners had to sleep on the floor because of a
massive shortage of beds. However, since the Kolbe Foundation began managing the prison

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system, they have addressed each of these issues. Even though there are a few hundred more
inmates at Belize Central Prison than in 2002, they have a functioning sewer and shower
system, and the number of available beds has skyrocketed from 300 to 2,100, ensuring that
everyone has access to basic necessities.xxi In addition, inmates now have access to addiction
treatment services and can voluntarily partake in education classes or work to learn vocational
skills taught by volunteers. The director of Belize Central Prison says that “a strict focus on
rehabilitation and viewing inmates as human beings worthy of respect has helped change the
prison’s culture and reduce criminality.”xxii The result? Recidivism rates have dropped to 10%
since these changes have gone into effect. These changes have come with their challenges,
but in the end the prison receives only the equivalent of $7 a day per prisoner in U.S. currency,
compared to the $99.45 that prisons receive in the United States, which means that the system
costs less to operate and yet delivers better services and treatment to its inmates.xxiii
In the Dominican Republic, prisons had historically been known as part of a corrupt
system, wherein drug lords and other wealthy inmates would pay upwards of $25,000 for
special treatment, including private suites and flatscreen TV’s. The country began a massive
effort in 2004 to utterly transform its prison system, with a stronger focus on human rights and
rehabilitation.xxiv The reforms intentionally reduced prison rates by implementing a strict cap on
the number of inmates allowed in each prison to reduce overcrowding, while simultaneously
improving living conditions.xxv Before these changes, it was common for prisoners to sleep on
the floor, and in some horrific instances, standing up, when there was not enough
space.xxvi The government’s goal is to reach a 100% literacy rate within the prison, and inmates
are required to enroll in educational programs. In addition, the new model intentionally does
not hire former police or military officers to work as prison guards: instead, they require prison
guards to receive extensive training, including mental health services, in order to de-escalate
conflicts between guards and inmates.xxvii As a result of these reforms, recidivism has dropped
from 50% to only 5% for inmates released from the new system. These changes have resulted
in such overwhelming success that now 22 out of the 41 prisons in the Dominican Republic
operate under this new model, even though it costs about twice as much per inmate.xxviii

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Overcrowding
As the United States has experienced a massive increase in its prison population, it has
not always been possible to ensure that there is adequate space for inmates. Just as when
people do not have access to clean water or clean air, when they do not have adequate space
and reasonable living conditions, they are experiencing a form of environmental injustice. The
Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in 2014 that 28 states within the U.S. were over “facility
capacity.”xxix Illinois was evaluated at 150% capacity, Ohio at 132%, Massachusetts at 130%,
and Nebraska at 128%.xxx In addition, 18 states were also over their “operational capacity,”
meaning the number of inmates housed had exceeded the number of staff and resources to
properly oversee the facility.xxxi States have increasingly contracted with private prisons in order
to meet demand for prisoners and the U.S. government has even subsidized the building of
private prisons because many states are near or over inmate capacity. There is no excuse for
housing inmates in overcrowded living quarters. Such conditions increase their risk of catching
infectious disease, a major concern in the era of Coronavirus. It also dramatically increases
infrastructure problems associated with poor sanitation, and inhibits access to medical care.

Prison Guards
Nations around the world have taken stock of their prison systems and realized that a
common problem has been prison guards. Much like the Black Lives Matter movement has
called for an increase in social services and key resources like mental health first aid responders
instead of the police (who are not specifically trained for mental health crises), some countries
have similarly redefined the role of guards within their prisons. As mentioned above, the
Dominican Republic made the decision to recruit prison guards without prior experience in
traditionally violent occupations like the police and the military, and ensured these staff
members were trained for de-escalation.xxxii
Uruguay has also taken a different approach at Punta de Rieles prison, the first in the
nation to not be managed by military personnel. The inside of this correctional facility is
patrolled almost exclusively by unarmed women, most of them with professional degrees in
social work, psychology, or human rights.xxxiii These women see themselves as sisters, not

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guards, offering support to inmates working through their problems. Their goal is to humanize
the inmates' experience in prison while also preparing them for life outside of prison.

r

We want to provide the best daily life possible, so prisoners can sleep peacefully
and do not feel humiliated, scared or fearful," [Director] Parodi told the BBC.xxxiv

The empathetic approach has clearly worked. Punta de Rieles has experienced a 2% recidivism
rate compared to a 50% recidivism rate throughout Uruguay.xxxv
In Germany, correctional officers are often social workers or lawyers. This is not a
requirement; rather it is the result of the country’s attitude that criminal behavior is often a
symptom of mental health needs that can be addressed and prevented from recurring or
worsening.xxxvi The role of therapy and mental health services in prison is widely recognized in
Germany as important, and therefore guards are paid quite well for the work they do.xxxvii
These are only a few of the examples where prison guards have either advanced
training in mental health services or where the role of prison guards has been reconstructed
altogether as a supportive staff member whose job it is to uplift inmates rather than oppress
them. Each of these examples demonstrates that providing prisoners with mental health
services and a supportive environment helps to decrease the likelihood that inmates will return
to prison after exiting the system. Considering that the U.S. has only 4% of the world's
population, but imprisons nearly ¼ of all the imprisoned people in the world, we need to take
a hard look at reforms that have been shown to decrease recidivism.xxxviii In addition, the fact
that the U.S. has nearly 10 times more mentally ill people in jails and prisons than in state
psychiatric hospitals, it is past time to consider the importance of addressing mental health and
trauma in this nation, and the need for doing so in ways that do not prioritize criminalization
and incarceration.xxxix

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Physical Environment
Another area for reform in the United
States is the physical environment in which
inmates live. A number of studies conclude
that a prisoner’s living environment has a
significant effect on the likelihood of recidivism
after they are released.xl The primary concerns
are: lack of privacy, poor sanitary conditions,
lack of access to outdoors/nature, poor

Photo 2: Inmate's living quarters. Photo used by Danner
Darcleight.

lighting and excessive noise. Deficiencies in
these areas have also been shown to reduce
prison staff wellbeing.xli Most prisons in the
U.S. fit a similar description: inmates live in
shared spaces surrounded by concrete and
steel; they lack privacy when using the
bathroom or showering; they are given
uniforms to wear and their identities are
reduced to a numerical ID; walls are kept

Photo 1: Modern jail cell in a closed government owned
facility. By trekandshoot.

blank; and inmates sleep on concrete slabs
with thin bedding. These conditions do little more than inspire resentment for being
imprisoned.xlii Countries around the world are jettisoning this archaic way of housing inmates
and seeking reforms that humanize them and prepare them for life after prison.
Prisons look strikingly different in Germany than in the U.S. Perhaps the most notable
difference is the autonomy inmates are afforded. Inmates are allowed to wear their own
clothes, cook their own meals, and are allowed to have cell phones so they can call family
members.xliii Inmates are even allowed to smoke on the prison grounds. Their living quarters
look “more like dorm rooms in a liberal arts college,” with porcelain toilets and sinks.xliv Inmates
sleep on beds and are allowed to decorate their spaces. Inmates are also afforded privacy and
correctional officers will knock before entering their rooms. At “Justizvollzugsanstalt

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Heidering,” a new-age German prison, there are also 33 physicians on site to care for the
inmates. This breaks down to a ratio of one doctor for every 127 inmates, compared to 1
doctor for every 750 inmates throughout the state of Virginia's prison system.xlv All of this ties
into Germany’s belief that inmates do not need to be punished beyond their sentence. Instead
of stripping inmates of their individuality, they are allowed to bring their personality and
character into their space.xlvi This system allows officials to focus primarily on making sure
inmates receive the help and care they need to be able to successfully re-enter society.
The Czech Republic is also experimenting with its prisons, and opened the nation’s first
open prison in 2017 (an “open” prison is separate from the oppressive 'open air' prison). The
intention behind this new model was to help inmates convicted of less-serious offenses to be
successfully reintegrated into society.xlvii In addition to hiring educators and psychologists
rather than traditional
armed prison guards,
the prison is designed
to look and act like a
village. Inmates live in
civilian-style houses
(shown below) and
participate in activities
like gardening and
animal breeding.xlviii

Photo 3: Open prison in Jiřice, photo: archive of Open prison in Jiřice.

Most inmates are able to work in the neighboring town. The goal was to simulate everyday life
to reduce the shock of transitioning in and out of prison. After two years, the new prison
showed remarkable success, with only 3% of inmates returning after release, compared to the
nation's 70% recidivism rate.xlix
While it is important to consider an inmate's living conditions as they relate to potential
recidivism, it needs to be noted that the living conditions in many U.S. prisons aren’t just
demeaning, they can be deadly. For example, Texas only has air conditioning in 30 of its 109
prisons. As a result, 22 people imprisoned in Texas have died due to extreme heat in recent

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years.l This is a widespread problem, as there are 12 U.S. states that do not provide universal
air conditioning within prisons.li This particular issue will only continue to become more
dangerous as climate change increases temperatures and makes dangerous weather events
more powerful and lethal. Many nations have devoted time and funding to reducing prison and
jail overcrowding, updating facilities, and reimagining their prison-guard structure in attempts
to help prisoners. The impact of these endeavors speaks for itself. Recidivism has dropped
dramatically where these reforms have been implemented. The U.S. carceral system has room
for many improvements, and it is imperative that we make an effort to improve the lives of
inmates while they are imprisoned. No one should die while imprisoned because of extreme
temperatures, and nor should they be dehumanized and stripped of their identity. The data has
shown that in valuing an inmate’s self-worth, we reduce recidivism and help create a safer
world.

Reconsidering how we treat former convicts

In the United States we all too frequently refuse to allow former convicts the opportunity to
grow and build the skills they need to stay out of jail and prison. After serving their sentence
and being released, former inmates are constantly reminded of their history with the criminal
legal system and face much adversity in trying to get their lives back on track as civilians. They
are required to list their past convictions throughout many daily interactions, including on job
and housing applications, and in doing so are far less likely to be hired or approved. This
arrangement prevents them from receiving federal financial assistance to pursue higher
education, from moving into certain neighborhoods, from accessing government-assisted
living, from qualifying for loans, from getting a better paying job, and even from being eligible
to vote. Additionally, those with felony drug convictions are banned for life from accessing cash
assistance and food stamps under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, unless their home-state
chooses to opt out of the ban.lii These policies heavily impact low-income persons and people
of color, who are structurally disenfranchised and relegated to second class citizenship.
Many of these burdens don’t exist for former inmates in Germany. As a society, Germans
tend to view “people who commit crimes as medical patients” rather than as dangerous

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criminals.liii They also largely believe that once an inmate has served their time, they have been
punished, and should not continue being punished. Employers in Germany typically do not
inquire about criminal records. A study conducted by the Sentencing Project found that in the
United States, “...employers are 50% less likely to call back white job applicants with
incarceration histories than comparable applicants without prison records.”liv This highlights the
continual punishment people with criminal records endure even after they have served their
time. Additionally, separate studies have shown that white applicants with criminal records are
often selected over applicants of color without criminal records. These prejudices mean that
job applicants of color with a criminal background are hard-pressed to be selected for a decent
job, even when they are qualified.lv
Americans cannot have it both ways and demand that formerly incarcerated folks build a
productive and functioning life, while we also distrust and actively prevent them from moving
on. It is time to reconsider and re-evaluate these policies. If prisoners have served their time,
we must allow them the opportunity to put their histories with the criminal legal system behind
them and build a new life. In 2018, the voters of Florida restored the right to vote to former
convicts charged with a felony. Proposition 17 in California’s 2020 election restored voting
rights to formerly incarcerated folks on parole. Additionally, the California Legislature voted in
September 2020 to allow former convicts the right to apply for certifications required for
firefighting jobs they were previously barred from. These are important examples of progress in
restoring rights to community members and will enable us to stop defining them as “former
convicts” and start considering them as “returning citizens”. We can all actively participate in a
cultural shift wherein we believe that this population has paid their debt to society and can
move forward rebuilding their lives without harassment and stigma. We conclude that more
reforms can, and must, be brought about to expand opportunities for “returning citizens” in
the United States. Reforms, such as not requiring people to disclose their past non-violent
crimes during job interviews, would likely increase post-carceral employment, decrease
recidivism rates, and therefore benefit our communities.

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Reconsidering “opportunities”

Labor
As was discussed in Chapter 2, Prison Labor and Vulnerability, United States federal law
currently allows inmates to be forced to work, often for shockingly low wages and under
hazardous conditions, and strips them of all workers’ rights. Depending on your perspective,
prison labor in the U.S. is either an echo of slavery or slavery 2.0. Working conditions are often
horrific and human life is valued primarily as a means to access cheap labor and for ensuring
profit. UNICOR, the federal company in charge of prison labor in the U.S., claims that prison
labor is important for inmates’ growth. They state that labor is a way for prisoners to earn their
keep, to contribute to society, and to learn the critical skills needed to be employed when they
get out of prison.lvi However, the evidence is overwhelming that the current system for prison
labor is malicious and only contributes to high rates of recidivism within the United States.
Many people argue that people convicted of a crime deserve to be punished. However,
committing a crime should not strip you of your basic human rights. Why is it necessary to force
incarcerated people to work for such low wages, with few worker protections, if any, and in
many cases risk their long-term health or their lives as a result of their environmental working
conditions? Additionally, there is a lot to be said about how prison labor practices play into the
cycle of recidivism. Studies have shown that when prisoners can earn money and save it while
incarcerated, they are more likely to leave prison and have the financial support to transition
back to everyday life. However, in the U.S., inmates earn mere cents for every hour worked.
Imagine how quickly one might run out of money once they are released and have to pay for
housing, food, clothes, and more, all before securing employment. Many formerly incarcerated
folks need to rely on a safety net of friends, family, and community resources, because they
lack the financial support on their own. That isn’t for lack of work or effort while incarcerated-the vast majority of inmates work while imprisoned. Instead of benefitting inmates, their labor
seems to benefit the government and private institutions that are able to purchase the goods
inmates produce at extremely low prices.
There are many countries that have a different outlook on prison labor, from Germany,
to the Netherlands and Sweden, to Uruguay and Belize. These countries show that prisoners

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can contribute to society through labor while still being afforded their human and worker’s
rights. In Germany, prisoners can earn between 10-20 euros (~$12.00-24.00 USD) a day for
their labor, and inmates are actually required to save money while in prison.lvii This practice
ensures that inmates will have money available once they are released, to help with food,
housing, and transitioning back into civilian life. This policy looks towards an inmate's release
date with the aim of preparing them for reintegration, highlighting the comparative absence of
any similar planning or empathy within the U.S.’s carceral system. An American former convict
reporting on Germany’s prison wage system was shocked to learn that he could have earned
up to 20 euros a day in Germany, compared to the $0.23/hour he was paid working in a prison
kitchen in the U.S.

r

“It’s a lot to take in...I went to prison at 19, and it was like ‘Your life is over.’ Here

I see the way it should be.” -- Shaka Senghor lviii

The Netherlands has a different approach to prison labor. Rather than forcing inmates
to work in unsafe conditions under the watch of prison guards, many non-violent Dutch
prisoners are outfitted with an ankle monitor and are allowed to leave prison to work in
everyday society.lix They are able to earn a competitive wage and are trusted to return back to
prison by a certain time each day. This freedom is incredibly hard to comprehend in the United
States, but is hailed in the Netherlands as a way to reduce recidivism rates, help with
reintegration, and save money on prison operational costs. In fact, recidivism rates are so low
that many prisons in the Netherlands are being closed due to a lack of prisoners.lx
There are some countries that agree with the UNICOR approach that working while
incarcerated is important. However, the key difference is that many prisons outside the U.S.
seek to protect the individual rights and agency of a given inmate. Under the new reforms in
Belize, inmates are encouraged to learn trade skills, like livestock management, construction,
entrepreneurship, and more.lxi In Uruguay’s Punta de Rieles prison, over 85% of inmates work
at one or more of the 38 different business ventures inside the prison. This includes baking
bread and selling it to locals, gardening, pottery, a barbershop, and more. In fact, 36 of the 38

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businesses in the prison are run by current and former prisoners.lxii Through a new initiative,
prisoners can now open bank accounts and can begin to save money while working, helping
them prepare for life outside.lxiii The freedom that inmates at Punta de Rieles experience--to
choose their work, get paid, build relationships, and more--has made a huge impact in
reducing their recidivism rate to 2%.lxiv These prisons highlight the idea that meaningful work
and the right to choose that work can dramatically cultivate self-esteem and play a role in
inmate rehabilitation.
Despite UNICOR’s misguided belief that exploitative labor benefits convicts, it is
impossible to uplift inmates within the current labor system. The U.S. carceral system is rooted
in a history of brutality and enslavement and it cannot begin to support inmates until there is a
greater distinction between slavery and current prison labor conditions. Inmates are not
protected by law as employees, their conditions do not raise morale or build self-worth, or help
inmates prepare to get a job once released. By deconstructing our exploitative prison labor
practices and, instead, creating a system that allows prisoners to earn a fair wage and have the
ability to choose the type of work they do, we can begin to treat prisoners with humanity and
help them better prepare for their eventual release.

Conclusion

By decriminalizing marijuana, we can reduce the population of our overcrowded
prisons, helping to improve the daily living and environmental conditions for inmates. By
treating drug use and non-violent crime as a mental health issue, by offering support services
instead of long prison sentences, and by restructuring inmate labor rights, we can reduce
recidivism, keep folks rooted in their communities, and strengthen those communities.
Americans must evaluate which practices and policies are failing within our carceral
system and look to other successful models for inspiration. Incarcerated folks--our family and
community members--deserve the basic human rights that civilians enjoy on the outside. By reevaluating criminal offenses and punishments, we can begin to heal our nation from the War on
Drugs. Officials will be better positioned to offer support to folks in need of mental health or
addiction services. By investing in and supporting inmates, we decrease the chance that they

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will return to prison and, instead, increase the wealth and opportunities of the communities
they live in. Racist policies, some borne straight from slavery, others from the Jim Crow era,
have disproportionately harmed our communities of color. It is past time that our government,
which created these problems, worked to address these massive injustices. There isn’t much of
a risk since our neighbors from around the world, in countries wealthy and poor, have already
shown us how well these programs can work. The current U.S. carceral system is inherently
flawed; it is time to call on our leaders and demand changes that will dramatically improve
environmental living conditions, reduce overcrowding, support inmate mental health, reduce
maximum sentencing, and prepare inmates for a successful transition back into society.

i

Alexander, The New Jim Crow.
Alexander.
iii
Alexander.
iv
Alexander.
v
“Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System.”
vi
“Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System.”
vii
Government of the Netherlands, “Difference between Hard and Soft Drugs - Drugs - Government.Nl.”
viii
Government of the Netherlands.
ix
Bajekal, “Want to Win the War on Drugs?”
x
Ferreira, “Portugal’s Radical Drugs Policy Is Working. Why Hasn’t the World Copied It?”
xi
Bajekal, “Want to Win the War on Drugs?”
xii
Bajekal.
xiii
Bajekal; Ferreira, “Portugal’s Radical Drugs Policy Is Working. Why Hasn’t the World Copied It?”
xiv
Ferreira, “Portugal’s Radical Drugs Policy Is Working. Why Hasn’t the World Copied It?”
xv
The Sentencing Project, “Report to United Nations-- Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States
Criminal Justice System.”
xvi
Kuper, “What the Dutch Can Teach the World about Cannabis”; Ferreira, “Portugal’s Radical Drugs
Policy Is Working. Why Hasn’t the World Copied It?”; Inspire Malibu, “10 Countries That Ended Their War
on Drugs.”
xvii
NowThis News, This County Attorney Candidate Won’t Prosecute Cannabis Crimes in Arizona |
NowThis.
xviii
Colorado Bureau of Investigation, “Marijuana Pardons.”
xix
Ballotpedia, “Oregon Measure 110, Drug Decriminalization and Addiction Treatment Initiative (2020).”
xx
Inspire Malibu, “10 Countries That Ended Their War on Drugs.”
xxi
Asmann, “Belize Prison Offers Softer Touch than Latin American Counterparts.”
xxii
Asmann.
xxiii
Sadulski, “Belize Prison’s Rehabilitation Programs Raise Morale, Lower Recidivism.”
xxiv
Fieser, “Dominican Republic’s More Humane Prison Model.”
xxv
Peirce, “» The New Prison Model in the Dominican Republic: Research on a Unique Prison Reform
Process.”
xxvi
Fieser, “Dominican Republic’s More Humane Prison Model.”
xxvii
Peirce, “» The New Prison Model in the Dominican Republic: Research on a Unique Prison Reform
Process.”
ii

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xxviii

Fieser, “Dominican Republic’s More Humane Prison Model”; Peirce, “» The New Prison Model in the
Dominican Republic: Research on a Unique Prison Reform Process.”
xxix
Danielle Kaeble et al., “Correctional Populations in the United States, 2014.”
xxx
Smith, “Inmate Populations in a Disaster: A Labor Force, a Vulnerable Population, and a Hazard.”
xxxi
Smith.
xxxii
Peirce, “» The New Prison Model in the Dominican Republic: Research on a Unique Prison Reform
Process.”
xxxiii
Orbe, “The Uruguayan Prison with a ‘Human Touch’ · Global Voices.”
xxxiv
Bernas and Hindi, “The Uruguayan Prison Where Inmates Set up Shop.”
xxxv
Orbe, “The Uruguayan Prison with a ‘Human Touch’ · Global Voices.”
xxxvi
Chammah, “Germany’s Kinder, Gentler, Safer Prisons.”
xxxvii
Chammah.
xxxviii
Aleem, “Sweden’s Remarkable Prison System Has Done What the U.S. Won’t Even Consider.”
xxxix
Aleem.
xl
“Physical Environment in Prisons.”
xli
“Physical Environment in Prisons”; Bradford, “An Examination of the Prison Environment: An Analysis
of Inmate Concerns across Eight Environmental Dimensions.”
xlii
“Physical Environment in Prisons”; Chammah, “Germany’s Kinder, Gentler, Safer Prisons.”
xliii
Chammah, “Germany’s Kinder, Gentler, Safer Prisons.”
xliv
Chammah.
xlv
Chammah.
xlvi
Chammah; Chammah, “How Germany Treats Juveniles.”
xlvii
Franková, “Czech Republic.”
xlviii
Franková.
xlix
Franková.
l
Kelly, “The Climate Disaster Inside America’s Prisons.”
li
Kelly.
lii
The Sentencing Project, “Report to United Nations-- Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States
Criminal Justice System.”
liii
Chammah, “Germany’s Kinder, Gentler, Safer Prisons.”
liv
The Sentencing Project, “Report to United Nations-- Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States
Criminal Justice System.”
lv
The Sentencing Project.
lvi
UNICOR, “UNICOR | Mission and Vision Statements; Strategic Goals.”
lvii
Chammah, “Germany’s Kinder, Gentler, Safer Prisons.”
lviii
Chammah.
lix
Weller, “Dutch Prisons Are Closing Because the Country Is so Safe.”
lx
Weller.
lxi
Sadulski, “Belize Prison’s Rehabilitation Programs Raise Morale, Lower Recidivism.”
lxii
Orbe, “The Uruguayan Prison with a ‘Human Touch’ · Global Voices”; Bernas and Hindi, “The
Uruguayan Prison Where Inmates Set up Shop.”
lxiii
Orbe, “The Uruguayan Prison with a ‘Human Touch’ · Global Voices”; Bernas and Hindi, “The
Uruguayan Prison Where Inmates Set up Shop.”
lxiv
Orbe, “The Uruguayan Prison with a ‘Human Touch’ · Global Voices.”

Photos, Graphics and Figures:
Title-page Photo: Razor wire surrounding the Maryland House of Correction. By Fred Dunn.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gratapictures/7720081382/in/album-72157630919567184/
Photo 1: Inmate living quarters. Photo used by Danner Darcleight. https://medium.com/@DannerDarcleight/howwe-live-in-a-prison-cell-e37cc98dbf0a.

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Photo 2: Modern jail cell in closed government owned facility. By Trekandshoot. Located on ShutterStock, ID
#60232678. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/modern-jail-cell-closed-government-owned-60232678.
Photo 3: Open prison in Jiřice, Czech Republic. Photo from archive of Open Prison in Jiřice.
https://english.radio.cz/first-czech-open-prison-reports-record-low-reoffending-rate8123468#:~:text=The%20Czech%20Republic's%20first%20open,them%20have%20returned%20behind%20bars

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