Prison-based environmental training programs: who is being transformed?

Abstract

Adult environmental education and training programs (environmental programs) are used to promote environmental stewardship in the United States (US). One unique setting for these programs is US prisons. Prison-based environmental programs vary widely, from Cooperative Extension Service programs (e.g. Master Gardener programs) to STEM lecture series to environmental literacy and job training programs to conservation research programs. Scholars have examined how these programs impact people who are incarcerated, but there is little research on how these programs affect the programs’ non-incarcerated facilitators (e.g. program administrators, educators, scientists, etc.). In this exploratory study, we use semi-structured, in-depth interviews to examine the experiences of some individuals engaged in implementing prison-based environmental programs. Our findings show how participants’ efforts to “transform” people who are incarcerated led many of them to their own transformations in how they perceived (1) people who are incarcerated, (2) their environmental programs, and (3) the broader carceral system.