Incarceration and environmental inequality

Maggie Leόn-Corwin, Jericho R. McElroy and Michelle L. Estes

Chapter 23 in Handbook on Inequality and the Environment, 2023, pp 405-428 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: State and federal prisons often are located near environmental health hazards, yet the relationship between where persons are incarcerated and what hazards may lie near them is an often taken-for-granted aspect of punishment. Moreover, carceral and environmental inequality intersect as modern punishment develops along with contemporary social, economic, political, and environmental relations. In this chapter, we draw upon theoretical insights from scholarship in environmental justice, law, sociology of punishment, and green criminology to review select case study applications of environmental inequality and incarceration. From these case study applications, we describe how the human body is acted upon in punishment and interrogate how proximal and prolonged exposure to human-made environmental hazards represents corporal punishment in the United States. In doing so, we provide the basis for formulating a testable theory of carceral environmental justice and identify several opportunities to develop this area of inquiry.

Keywords: Environment; Geography; Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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