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The Hidden Connection Between the Ohio Derailment, Environmental Injustice, and Mass Incarceration
Apr 16, 2023
Attorney General Dave Yost is now suing the Norfolk Southern rail company on behalf of Ohio for the reckless endangerment of residents' health. The recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio required locals to evacuate their homes, adding to the ongoing list of recent environmental disasters in the US. Since then, the crisis has garnered much-deserved attention, including a federal attempt to utilize multiple agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation to support the community following the event.
What most people don’t know is that less than 15 miles from East Palestine, there are two federal prisons housing thousands of incarcerated individuals and employing a large correctional staff to support its operations—a population unable to quickly escape such a disaster.
Unfortunately, it is nothing new that those who live and work within correctional facilities are exposed to environmental hazards. In fact, 134 federal and state prisons are located within a mile of a Superfund cleanup site, which are known to release toxins that are harmful to human health. Documenting this risk, recent research shows that correctional facilities in the Southwest are nearly six times more likely to have excess arsenic in their water systems than surrounding communities.
These environmental hazards aren’t without health impacts, which could be one reason why both those impacted by incarceration and those who work in correctional facilities have shorter life expectancies than the general public. One such study provides evidence for this connection by showing that 13% of deaths in Texas prisons were related to excessive heat in facilities without air conditioning.
Environmental injustice examines how environmental hazards, such as air pollution and waste contamination, disproportionately impact racial/ethnic minority and poor communities as a result of intentional policies and lack of regulations. For example, researchers from the EPA have documented that Black individuals are at higher risk of being exposed to air pollution, confirming environmental injustice as a form of structural racism.
Further, while attention has been given to social phenomena such as redlining and zoning codes as key tenets of environmental injustice, the carceral state has not received as much attention in its role in exposing minority populations to environmental hazards. This is surprising given that correctional facilities are located in places that are unhealthy for humans and also that incarceration disproportionately impacted communities of color. Nearly 1 in 3 Black men will be incarcerated during their lives, and Black and Latinx are disproportionately represented in the corrections occupation. Thus, addressing environmental injustice requires attention towards abolishing mass incarceration.
Advocacy around these issues is being led by those most impacted, including JustLeadershipUSA—a national advocacy organization led by those who have been involved in the criminal legal system. I support the organization’s call for the passage of the Correctional Facility Disaster Preparedness Act, a bill introduced by Senator Duckworth which would require the Bureau of Prisons to generate annual reports of disaster damage to Congress.
Further, the Biden-Harris administration has a unique opportunity to prioritize those within the carceral system in its environmental regulations and preparedness planning. A national gathering of those formerly and currently incarcerated as well as correctional staff and unions should be convened to discuss how to systematically include and prioritize them across parts of the administration focused on occupational and environmental health hazards, such as the EPA.
Last, in the case of East Palestine, Ohio, those who live and work in the nearby prisons must not be excluded in any legal actions taken moving ahead. A decade ago, a coal industry watchdog filed a lawsuit suing a company for dumping coal ash which was impacting nearby communities in rural Pennsylvania. The lawsuit included the 50 families in the town but failed to include the incarcerated individuals in the men’s prison nearby. Under no circumstances should this be the case for lawsuits regarding the environmental health negligence in Ohio.
Mass incarceration has been woven into the fabric of American society, especially for Black, Brown, and poor communities. With our current climate crisis, another environmental disaster will probably happen sooner than any of us would like. Achieving environmental justice requires prioritizing and including those who live and work in correctional facilities as a high-risk population for environmental hazards - and it has to start now because answering the calls for justice is long overdue.
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In 'Extraordinary Victory,' FCC Votes to Cap Exorbitant Prison Phone Fees
"Because of today's FCC decision many families across the country will be able to change, overcome, and heal together."
Oct 22, 2015
Marking what one advocacy group called "an extraordinary victory for the millions of families of the incarcerated," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday voted to cap the rates for all calls from prison, jails, and detention centers, ban most add-on fees imposed by prison phone service providers, and set strict limits on the few fees that remain.
In a press statement, the FCC said it was "acting on its mandate to ensure that phone call rates are just, reasonable, and fair for all Americans" by reining in the "excessive rates and egregious fees on phone calls paid by some of society's most vulnerable: people trying to stay in touch with loved ones serving time in jail or prison."
"While contact between inmates and their loved ones has been shown to reduce the rate of recidivism, high inmate calling rates have made that contact unaffordable for many families, who often live in poverty," the FCC statement continued. "Reducing the cost of these calls measurably increases the amount of contact between inmates and their loved ones, making an important contribution to the criminal justice reforms sweeping the nation."
The new rules cap the cost of prison phone calls at 11 cents a minute for debit or prepaid calls in state and federal prisons and reduce the cost of most inmate calls from $2.96 to $1.65 for a 15-minute in-state call and from $3.15 to $1.65 for a 15-minute long-distance call. The new policy also cracks down on service fees and so-called "flat-rate calling," in which inmates are charged a flat rate for a call of up to 15 minutes regardless of the actual call duration.
"Voting to endorse today's reforms will eliminate the most egregious case of market failure I have ever seen in my 17 years as a state and federal regulator," FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said Thursday during the agency's monthly open meeting. "The system is inequitable; it has preyed on our most vulnerable for too long, families are being further torn apart, and the cycle of poverty is being perpetuated."
Rights groups have been calling on the FCC to provide relief from such high rates for over a decade. On Thursday, they hailed the agency's vote as a step toward broader criminal justice reform.
"In passing the most comprehensive reforms to date to the prison phone industry, champions like Commissioner Clyburn listened to those long considered voiceless--the families of the 2.4 million people incarcerated in the United States," said Malkia Cyril, executive director at the Center for Media Justice and co-founder of the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net). "While there is more work to do to ban commissions and protect the right to in-person visitation, the dozens of organizations and almost 200,000 individuals that fought long and hard for this day should be proud. It's long past time to reform the unreasonable rates predatory companies impose upon a captive consumer base."
Indeed, Clyburn on Thursday specifically hailed "the tireless advocacy of the Media Action Grassroots Network who brought this issue to my attention three years ago and continued to passionately push for relief for the most economically vulnerable in our society."
A report released last month by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, and Research Action Design revealed that the exorbitant costs of prison calls, legal fees, and other incarceration-related expenses are disproportionately born by black women--and contribute to the trauma and poverty endured by family members.
Devin Coleman, a formerly incarcerated organizer with Florida New Majority, added: "Sometimes visiting is not an option, and the next best thing is hearing the voice of a loved one. I know from personal experience how vital it is to hear that voice of support, encouragement, and hope from a family member. Because of today's FCC decision, many families across the country will be able to change, overcome, and heal together."
On Thursday, MAG-Net shared videos from individuals who will be directly affected by the FCC's decision:
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Kalief Browder, Albert Woodfox and the Torture of Solitary Confinement
Jun 11, 2015
Twelve days after his 22nd birthday, Kalief Browder wrapped an air-conditioner power cord around his neck and hanged himself. In 2010, at the age of 16, he was arrested after being accused of stealing a backpack. He would spend three years in New York City's Rikers Island prison, more than two of those years in solitary confinement. He was beaten by prison guards and inmates alike. He was not serving a sentence; he was in pretrial detention. He declined all plea bargains. He wanted his day in court, to prove his innocence. A judge finally dismissed the case against him. After his release, Kalief Browder tried to reclaim his life. In the end, the nightmare he lived through overwhelmed him. Two years after his release, he committed suicide.
Albert Woodfox also knows the torment of solitary confinement. Woodfox has the distinction of being the prisoner in the United States who has spent the most time in solitary confinement, now well over 42 years. For most of that time, he was locked up in the notorious maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary known as "Angola," built on the site of a former plantation worked by slaves from the African country of Angola.
Woodfox is one of the "Angola Three," three prisoners who served more than a century--that's right, more than 100 years--of solitary confinement between them. They believe the isolation was retaliation for forming the first prison chapter of the Black Panthers in 1971. They were targeted for organizing against segregation, inhumane working conditions and the systemic rape and sexual slavery inflicted on many imprisoned at Angola.
Woodfox and another of the Angola 3, the late Herman Wallace, were convicted for the 1972 murder of prison guard Brent Miller. The case against them had significant flaws, and their convictions were later overturned. On Oct. 1, 2013, Herman Wallace was freed, but only after a federal judge threatened to arrest the warden if he did not release him. Wallace was suffering from advanced liver cancer, and died, surrounded by family and friends, several days later.
A federal judge has just issued a similarly urgent order for Albert Woodfox's release, but the state of Louisiana has appealed to a federal appeals court. Woodfox's conviction has been overturned not once but twice. Even the murdered guard's widow, Teenie Verret, has said she doesn't believe the men killed her husband. Nevertheless, Louisiana's Attorney General "Buddy" Caldwell would like to subject Woodfox, who is now 68, to a third trial for the same crime. Federal Judge James Brady is determined to set Woodfox free, once and for all.
Brady ordered, "Mr. Woodfox's age and poor health ... this Court's lack of confidence in the State to provide a fair third trial, the prejudice done onto Mr. Woodfox by spending over forty years in solitary confinement, and finally the very fact that Mr. Woodfox has already been tried twice and would otherwise face his third trial for a crime that occurred over forty years ago ... the only just remedy is an unconditional writ of habeas corpus barring retrial of Mr. Albert Woodfox and releasing Mr. Woodfox from custody immediately."
The warden of Angola, Burl Cain, said he had to keep Woodfox and the Angola 3 in solitary confinement because of their "Black Pantherism." Woodfox, speaking over a prison phone, said, "I thought that my cause, then and now, was noble. ... So they might bend me a little bit, they may cause me a lot of pain, they may even take my life; but they will never be able to break me."
Kalief Browder, sadly, was broken. Jennifer Gonnerman of The New Yorker magazine, who wrote eloquently about Kalief's case while he was alive, wrote on the day after his death, "He wanted the public to know what he had gone through, so that nobody else would have to endure the same ordeals." New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has ended solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year olds on Rikers Island, and hopes to end it soon for those under 21. After learning of the suicide, de Blasio said: "A lot of the changes we are making at Rikers Island right now are a result of the example of Kalief Browder. So I wish, I deeply wish we hadn't lost him, but he did not die in vain."
There are an estimated 80,000-100,000 prisoners held in some form of solitary confinement in the United States. The United Nations says the practice often amounts to torture. It is cruel and unusual punishment, and must be abolished, once and for all.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
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