Date of Award

Spring 5-11-2025

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Environmental Studies

Advisor(s)

John Van Buren

Abstract

Unbeknownst to many, human rights violations occur on a large scale behind prison walls. This paper examines some of these violations, especially those exacerbated by climate change, through an environmental lense in order to emphasize the need for social welfare-based solutions in the abolition of the prison industrial complex. It also seeks to illustrate the connection between the environmental justice movement and the prison abolition movement so that marginalized peoples may be free from shouldering disproportionate effects of environmental hazards and imprisonment. This paper is introduced with a brief overview of the human rights violations occurring in prisons. Using quantitative and qualitative data, chapter one explains the connections between prison abolition, environmental justice, and climate change. As well as detailing the negative impacts of prisons on ecosystem services. Chapter two explores the evolution of prisons in America, starting with their earliest form – plantations – and concluding with their current state: the industrial prison complex. In so doing, it depicts the longstanding relationship between prisons and the environment and disproves the notion that the criminal justice system is broken, instead showing that the system is working exactly as it is intended. Chapter three defines the environmental justice movement and the prison abolition movement. It ends with an analysis of a case study in which the two movements come together to fight a common enemy, to show that the movements can strengthen each other when they join forces. Chapter four explores the many environmental justice issues within prisons that threaten imprisoned people's basic human rights– such as their placement near superfund sites, their allowance of contaminated water, and their lack of temperature control. The topics covered in previous chapters converge in chapter five, which suggests abolitionist policies to defund the industrial prison complex and redirect the funds into environmentally focused community welfare resources – education, housing, healthcare, and employment.

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