Environmental discourse often calls for systemic change, yet it ignores one of the most destructive systems in the United States: the prison-industrial complex. Prisons are not only sites of mass human confinement and labor exploitation — they are also engines of environmental harm and climate injustice. From their establishment on toxic land to their immense consumption of water and energy, prisons are ecological hazards by design. The intersection of mass incarceration and environmental degradation reveals a simple truth: climate collapse and the prison system are related symptoms of a society built on exploitation and disposability. To fight for climate justice without naming prisons is to ignore a pillar of the system many environmental activists claim to dismantle.
A study done in 2016 found that at least 589 federal and state prisons were located on or within three miles of a “Superfund” site, exposing incarcerated individuals to hazardous conditions. Superfund sites are areas designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as contaminated with hazardous waste and are prioritized for cleanup. In Victorville, California, a prison sits atop a former military site that became a Superfund zone after decades of contamination left the soil and groundwater polluted with jet fuel plumes, trichlorethylene, dioxins and other toxic waste. Similarly, many Appalachian prisons occupy former mining sites, harming local ecosystems and the health of surrounding communities.
Complicating the issue further, recent federal policy changes have introduced uncertainty into environmental remediation efforts. Under the current administration, the EPA faces significant funding cuts to the Superfund program, limiting its capacity to identify and manage hazardous waste sites, leaving them squandered. Beyond their location, prisons also have enormous environmental footprints. Their energy and water demands are immense, roughly twice that of schools or office buildings, and they generate vast amounts of biowaste. The expansive concrete infrastructure also intensifies the trapping and radiation of heat, raising local temperatures through a higher albedo. Together, these factors make prisons a deadly combination for those residing in and around them.
Incarcerated people are not only trapped in these hazardous environments but are forced to remediate the climate crisis as cheap labor. More than 800,000 people in U.S. prisons are working for their facilities. Many are deployed as firefighters, road crews and emergency responders during natural disasters. At least 30 states formally include incarcerated workers in their emergency response plans, sending them into wildfires, floods and hurricanes while paying them pennies on the dollar — or sometimes nothing at all. These workers are denied basic labor rights and protections that other emergency responders are guaranteed through law. They risk their lives, often without fair compensation, and are denied the right to unionize while being subjected to sometimes dangerous work assignments. The same system that cages people also exploits their labor to mitigate the consequences of the very disasters it helps exacerbate.
The center of these abuses is the prison-industrial complex: a network of facilities, detention centers, policing and private interests that profits from incarceration. Its expansion drives the construction of more prisons on cheap, high-risk land, further degrading local ecosystems and intensifying climate risks. By funneling marginalized communities into detention and exploiting their labor, the complex generates environmental and social harm as an intrinsic part of its operation.
This tactic extends far beyond prison walls: it worsens climate disasters and amplifies their consequences. As millions are forced to migrate because of climate-driven displacement, the United States’ militarized border and expanded detention facilities have impeded the safety of countless migrants. Between 2008 and 2015 alone, an average of 21.5 million people were displaced each year by climate related hazards, many of whom ending up confined in detention centers that function as extensions of the prison system. A cycle is created: more crises create more migration, which is then criminalized and funneled into the expanding prison industry, which in turn worsens environmental destruction.
Meanwhile, environmental protests against these consequences are also criminalized under the label of “eco-terrorism.” In February 2024, climate activists with Declare Emergency dumped red powder on the display case holding the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives to draw attention to the climate crisis. As is typical with symbolic protests like these, the Constitution itself was unharmed, but both activists were convicted of felony destruction of government property. A key part of the continued functioning of the system is that any dissent which becomes too disruptive to it will then become criminalized and controlled. Prisons are created to uphold the status quo and disrupt deviance, even when that deviance is against impending ecological collapse.
At their core, both climate justice and prison rectification are fighting against a common logic that people and places can be disposable. The prison industrial complex forces labor from marginalized communities all while putting their health, alongside the health of the ecosystem, in danger. Environmental destruction, forced labor and mass incarceration are not separate issues, but rather interconnected outcomes of the same cycle. Without addressing prisons, environmental activism reinforces the very structure of exploitation it seeks to dismantle. Confronting climate change requires confronting incarceration, eliminating reliance on prison labor and rethinking how we allow land to be used. True climate justice means protecting life, restoring ecological balance and challenging societal structures built on disposability.