Nonprofit Quarterly: “…the prison and the industrial sprawl around it are products of the same calculus: extract what’s deemed useful, discard what isn’t, and find the cheapest possible place to hide the remainder.

This calculus has roots in the plantation economy, in convict leasing after the Civil War, in redlining and urban renewal, and in every era of American history when Black and brown communities were deemed expendable, their land available for the taking, and their bodies available for the labor. The ecological crisis unfolding inside and around Stateville was not an aberration in the American story. It is one of its central chapters….

The Toxic Prisons Campaign has responded by doing the work that state agencies and public health departments have refused to do: mapping the overlap between incarceration sites and environmental hazards, supporting formerly incarcerated people in documenting their health impacts, and pressuring state legislatures to conduct environmental impact assessments before any new prison construction. They have also partnered with groups like the Abolitionist Law Center to file public records requests and pursue litigation. They are building an evidentiary record that the harms at facilities like Fayette are not accidents but foreseeable consequences of deliberate choices.”

read the full article

Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein