– Part of Grassroots Effort to Ensure a Different Future for Eastern Kentucky

The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ construction proposal conflicts with plans to restore the land under Indigenous stewardship.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
January 22, 2025

CONTACTS:
Institute to End Mass Incarceration (IEMI): Joan Steffen, joan@endmassincarceration.org, (617) 384-0617
Appalachian Rekindling Project (ARP): Tiffany, info@appalachianrekindlingproject.org
Building Community Not Prisons (BCNP): Idris Isaiah Irihamye, buildingcommunitynotprisons@gmail.com
Concerned Letcher Countians (CLC): Dr. Artie Ann Bates, artieannbates@gmail.com

Letcher County, Kentucky — On January 22, 2025, the Appalachian Rekindling Project (ARP), an Indigenous woman-led community building and land restoration group, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to commemorate its recent purchase of a 63-acre plot of land within the currently designated boundaries of a federal prison proposed for construction in Letcher County, Kentucky.

ARP procured the land with a very different goal than that of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP): to collectively restore the strip-mined property through Indigenous land rematriation practices and to provide an alternative to the harms of incarceration.

The Institute to End Mass Incarceration (IEMI), a legal organization that works closely with grassroots partners to challenge our country’s system of mass incarceration, represents ARP and facilitated this land purchase. “Across the country, prisons built in the prison boom of the 80s and 90s are crumbling,” said Joan Steffen, an attorney at IEMI. “Now is the time to ask ourselves: what kind of future do we want to build? We support ARP in helping to build one that is rooted in human and ecological flourishing, not incarceration.”

ARP is developing a variety of possible land restoration initiatives for the property, including returning native species like bison which used to inhabit the region. “This marks a historic moment for this land. Years of strip mining have taken their toll on the land, which has been out of Indigenous care for too long. We are beyond happy to have access to the land, to care for it, and to offer non-extractive, non-carceral ways to enrich the community. ARP purchased it first and foremost to restore the land through Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge practices, but also to show that Native people deserve a say in what happens to our homelands,” said ARP’s Co-Executive Director Tiffany, who was raised in Letcher County. Prior to colonization and forced removal, this region was occupied and cared for by the Cherokee, Shawnee, and Yuchi Tribes.

In contrast to ARP’s plans to restore the land, the FBOP intends to burden it and the surrounding community with an unnecessary, unwanted and harmful new federal prison. On October 28th, the FBOP released its Record of Decision (ROD) to spend more than half a billion dollars to build FCI Letcher, a proposed 1,408-bed federal prison and work camp. If built, FCI Letcher would become the seventeenth state or federal prison in Central Appalachia, a region already beset by the harsh environmental, economic and public health hazards caused by decades of coal mining and mountaintop removal. Despite its decision to proceed to the next stage in implementing the prison plan, FBOP has previously called on Congress to rescind funding for the project.

ARP acquired the land with support from the coalition Building Community Not Prisons (BCNP), a grassroots coalition of local and national members working to oppose the construction of FCI Letcher and create better opportunities for the people of Letcher County and for the communities of color most impacted by mass incarceration. “A federal prison in Eastern Kentucky will devastate more than the environment—it will tear apart families, disproportionately harm Black and Brown communities, and further disenfranchise those already oppressed. This is not the path to economic revival. What we need is sustainable jobs, clean water, and investments that heal our land and uplift our people—not a prison that perpetuates harm and injustice,” said Dee Parker, a member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) and BCNP, who has lobbied Congress to rescind funding for FCI Letcher.

Concerned Letcher Countians (CLC), a BCNP member organization of local residents working to dispel myths about the purported benefits of the prison, also worked closely with ARP throughout the acquisition process. According to CLC representative Dr. Artie Ann Bates, “As we watch parts of Appalachia pick up the pieces after recent flooding, it’s clear that we need investments in projects that uplift our people and repair the environmental harms of coal mining. Nearby prisons were promised as jobs programs, too, but those communities continue to struggle with the same economic hardships. We believe that ecotourism, local agriculture initiatives and land restoration work by groups like ARP can help create an alternative vision of Letcher County’s future.”

Tiffany, of ARP, grew up in Letcher County, Kentucky — not far from the purchased land. For her, this project is deeply personal. “As someone who grew up in this community, I know firsthand how badly this county deserves economic opportunity and a chance to thrive. I know the proposed prison is not how we get that. We can collectively choose a different, more restorative future for our community, for the land that has been through so much, and for everyone who this prison would hurt. Repairing the land together is how we say that there is more to this place than what some say there is, that a prison was not the only option here. We, at ARP, believe that building connections to the land and to each other is the future we need to pursue.”

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Abolitionist Law Center is part of Building Community Not Prisons, a large coalition, representing many different stakeholders, who are attempting to halt the construction of this federal prison in Letcher County.