Carceral Ecologies: Environmental and Social Impacts of the Prison-Industrial Complex in the U.S. South

This essay investigates prisons in the U.S. South as infrastructures of state-manufactured socio-ecological warfare. Drawing from necropolitics, carceral geography, and political ecology, Ipropose carceral socio-ecological violence as a framework for analyzing how incarcerationproduces environmental violence that extends beyond confinement. Prisons contaminateecosystems, dismantle community knowledge systems, and undermine the social cohesionrequired for collective survival. EPA compliance data from 232 facilities across thirteen states(2019–2024) reveal sustained and extreme violations: wastewater discharges exceeded federaltoxicity thresholds by 2,400%, and radiological contamination persisted for twelve consecutivereporting cycles. Over 72% of these violations occurred in communities facing structuralpoverty, racial segregation, and political disenfranchisement—elements of a broader strategy ofstate-sanctioned abandonment. The essay examines the 2025 rollback of environmentalprotections, including the closure of environmental justice offices, deletion of compliance andviolation records, and mass exemption of industrial polluters from federal law. In response, Ipropose a community-based Environmental Justice Governance Framework rooted in collectiveautonomy, including independent monitoring networks, direct community control overenvironmental and public health decisions, and decentralized resource infrastructures. Carceralsocio-ecological violence exposes how mass incarceration, environmental degradation, andepistemic erasure function as interlocking systems of racial control. Affirming the necessity ofabolition, I call for the transfer of environmental and public health governance to communitieshistorically targeted by state violence and systemic neglect.