In 2013, records show that the Bureau of Justice Statistics recorded a study 2.3 million incarcerated Americans( Not counting aliens or foreigners) but 5,000 jails and prisons that hold them are frequently situated in remote and impoverished areas and inhabited by people whose free speech rights are sharply curtailed.( Texas a perfect example) They work far from the public view. What better way to get away with murder, if no one is around to see, hear or even care about it?“ The fact is, the prison system knows what is wrong and what things are right, just as much as inmates know the same, but then we inmates have to be held to a higher degree? How backwards is that?” says Texas prison inmate, Torino Thomas. He further adds.“ When it has gotten to the point where the inmates have superseded the criminal justice system in doing what’ s right, that’ s when it’ s clear that the criminal justice system has failed”. Bartlett State Jail, a private ran CCA facility that houses both state prison inmates and TDCJ inmates, deals with days without running clean water to where“ outhouses” have to be brought in as a contingency, but how many prisons are taking these steps to make sure water sources are drinkable for inmates and staff alike? Another example is in Flint, Michigan, where their water source has been tainted, and some specialists believe that it’ s due to a surge of violence that the city is trying to decrease. The EPA defines environmental justice as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are vastly over-represented in the nation’ s prisons, yet the Federal Bureau of Prison( FBP) never assesses the environmental justice impacts of new prisons as part of an environmental impact statement. If it had, some prisons might never have been constructed. Prison systems such as California’ s DOC, Illinois DOC, TDCJ, Florida, Michigan, New York and Alabama Department of Corrections are more business run, than many other prison systems around the world. Anything will be done to protect the financial infrastructure of a multi-billion dollar corporate industry, in which inmates are commodities.
In Pennsylvania, the 2,000 prisoner state correctional institution at Fayette sits literally next to a massive coal ash dumping site that has toxics like mercury, lead, arsenic, hexavalent, chromium, cadmium and thallium. Rikers Island correctional facility in New York, built in 1932, was built on a landfill that, to this day, belches foulsmelling methane gas. In Washington State, the Northwest Detention Center is next to a federal superfund site known as Tacoma Tar Pits. In Colorado, 9 State and four federal prisons are located in an area where the water table has been contaminated by high concentrations of tetra chloroethene from an abandoned uranium mill.
In Texas, Prisoners have re-
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“ Our prisons are a constant source of environmental degradation”
ported health problems consistent with toxic exposure.“ You are told the reason for being here, and if you don’ t like it, stop coming. Is that really the attitude to take when trying to reform and rehabilitate offenders?” says Joe David, an offender in a Texas prison.“ So just because I got convicted of a crime means that my health is no longer an issue of importance? Am I really hearing this? We can’ t say that we don’ t like it here, so can I be moved. It’ s not that simple. In prison you don’ t have a choice to even decide what things are health risks or not. These issues have yet to reach the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In the environmental community, people will see that the government has the solution, but in reality the government can only do so much in areas like these. If the federal government is the one building these prisons in health-risky areas, it’ s then the government placing people at gun point, so the government is then ignoring these issues of toxic environmental issues.
Gerry Delano Hudson # 01560462 Bartlett State Jail 1018 Arnold Drive Bartlett, TX 76511