Carceral Systems Research Articles

Prison Buprenorphine Implementation and Postrelease Opioid Use Disorder Outcomes

Agonist medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), buprenorphine and methadone, in carceral settings might reduce the risk of postrelease opioid overdose but are uncommonly offered. In April 2019, the Massachusetts Department of Correction (MADOC), the state prison system, provided buprenorphine for incarcerated individuals in addition to previously offered injectable naltrexone. To evaluate postrelease outcomes after buprenorphine implementation. This cohort study with interrupted time-series analysis used linked data across multiple statewide data sets in the Massachusetts Public Health Data Warehouse stratified by sex due to differences in carceral systems. Eligible participants were individuals sentenced and released from a MADOC facility to the community. The study period for the male sample was January 2014 to November 2020; for the female sample, January 2015 to October 2019. Data were analyzed between February 2022 and January 2024. April 2019 implementation of buprenorphine during incarceration. Receipt of MOUD within 4 weeks after release, opioid overdose, and all-cause mortality within 8 weeks after release, each measured as a percentage of monthly releases who experienced the outcome. Segmented linear regression analyzed changes in outcome rates after implementation. A total of 15 225 individuals were included. In the male sample there were 14 582 releases among 12 688 individuals (mean [SD] age, 35.0 [10.8] years; 133 Asian and Pacific Islander [0.9%], 4079 Black [28.0%], 4208 Hispanic [28.9%], 6117 White [41.9%]), a rate of 175.7 releases per month; the female sample included 3269 releases among 2537 individuals (mean [SD] age, 34.9 [9.8] years; 328 Black [10.0%], 225 Hispanic [6.9%], 2545 White [77.9%]), a rate of 56.4 releases per month. Among male participants at 20 months postimplementation, the monthly rate of postrelease buprenorphine receipt was higher than would have been expected under baseline trends (21.2% vs 10.6% of monthly releases; 18.6 additional releases per month). Naltrexone receipt was lower than expected (1.0% vs 6.0%; 8.8 fewer releases per month). Monthly rates of methadone receipt (1.4%) and opioid overdose (1.8%) were not significantly different than expected. All-cause mortality was lower than expected (1.9% vs 2.8%; 1.5 fewer deaths per month). Among female participants at 7 months postimplementation, buprenorphine receipt was higher than expected (31.6% vs 9.5%; 12.4 additional releases per month). Naltrexone receipt was lower than expected (3.4% vs 7.2%) but not statistically significantly different. Monthly rates of methadone receipt (1.1%), opioid overdose (4.8%), and all-cause mortality (1.6%) were not significantly different than expected. In this cohort study of state prison releases, postrelease buprenorphine receipt increased and naltrexone receipt decreased after buprenorphine became available during incarceration.

Latent profiles and psychosocial correlates of persistent self-injury among incarcerated adults

Self-directed violence (SDV), including both suicide and non-suicidal self-injury, represents a major challenge for carceral systems. Persistent self-injury (PSI) is an understudied SDV subtype, especially within the carceral context. The present study addressed three research questions: (a) do naturally occurring SDV subgroups occur within a carceral population (e.g., PSI versus other classes); (b) how SDV groups may be differentiated by verbal or behavioral SDV; and (c) whether demographic, mental health, and incarceration-related factors are associated with SDV subgroups. We conducted a secondary analysis of existing data from a statewide carceral electronic medical record (N = 3527). Latent class analysis supports two SDV subtypes: episodic and persistent self-injury. The PSI class was characterized by significantly greater verbal expressions and behavioral acts of SDV compared to the episodic group. Correlates of the PSI subtype included older age, male sex, prior SDV, and lower depressive symptoms. Findings are discussed with respect to the proposed Diagnostic and Statistical Manual self-injury focused disorder, influential factors on SDV in carceral settings, and recommendations for future research and practice.

Building an implementation framework to address unmet contraceptive care needs in a carceral setting: a systematic review

BackgroundThe provision of contraceptive care for incarcerated individuals has been largely inconsistent and has contributed to, at best, inadequate care, and at worst reproductive abuses, violence, and coercion. While previous research has identified strategies to remedy known issues, to date, very few recommendations have been implemented across the carceral system. To address this, we conducted a systematic review of policy and practice recommendations to improve contraceptive care to reproductive-aged, incarcerated individuals in the United States.MethodsWe conducted this systematic review utilizing the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology and framed it within the National Implementation Research Network’s (NIRN) Exploration stage. We searched PubMed, PSYCInfo, SCOPUS, ProQuest, Web of Science, MedLine, Social Science Citation Index and reference sections of included materials. Basic study information, explicitly stated policy and practice recommendations, and discussions and conclusions that subtly provide recommendations were extracted in full text. We utilized a thematic analysis approach to analyze the extracted text.ResultsA total of 45 materials met the inclusion criteria. Seven overarching themes were identified: 1) policy changes needed to implement care; 2) need for contraceptive care in carceral systems; 3) justice agency barriers regarding contraceptive care provision; 4) policy barriers to contraceptive access; 5) funding strategies to improve care; 6) patient preferences for contraceptive care delivery; and 7) healthcare provider knowledge regarding contraceptive care. The seven themes identified shed light on the need for, gaps, barriers, and facilitators of current contraceptive care provision to incarcerated individuals.ConclusionThis systematic review accomplished two goals of NIRN’s Exploration stage. First, the compiled evidence identified a clear need for change regarding policies and practices pertaining to contraceptive care provision to incarcerated individuals in the United States. Second, our findings identified several evidence-based solutions supported both by research and professional healthcare organizations to address the identified need for change. This study provides an initial blueprint for correctional agencies to implement the necessary changes for improving contraceptive care provision to incarcerated populations. The correctional system is in a unique position to deliver much-needed care, which would result in many potential benefits to the individuals, correctional system, and community at large.

Cruel and Unusual: Reforming Carceral Systems to Protect and Affirm Transgender and Gender-Diverse Communities.

Transgender and gender-diverse communities are disproportionately incarcerated in the USA. Incarcerated gender minority populations are detained within carceral systems constructed around a cisgender (gender identity matches sex assigned at birth) binary (only male and female identities recognized) understanding of gender. This leads to marginalizing experiences while perpetuating the extreme vulnerability individuals experience in the community. In order to address this cruel and unusual experience, carceral systems should undergo "whole-setting" reforms to protect and affirm transgender and gender-diverse populations. This includes ensuring access to gender-affirming clinical care that aligns with community health standards recommended by medical professional associations. Implementing gender-affirming reforms reduces security issues and will likely improve health outcomes providing mutual benefit for both correctional staff and gender minority populations. Given the current divisive political and social environment for gender minority populations in the USA, evidence-based person-centered reforms in corrections are needed now more than ever.

Death in Prison: increasing transparency on next of kin notification and disposition of remains

BackgroundPolicies for next-of-kin (NOK) notification and disposition of remains surrounding death are unclear across the United States’ (US) carceral systems. The goal of this study was to collect data on carceral system policies pertaining to NOK notification and disposition of remains for individuals who are incarcerated. We collected publicly available operational policies for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 50 state prison systems, and the Washington D.C. jail for a total of 53 systems.ResultsApproximately 70% of systems had available policies on NOK notification and disposition of remains. Few systems had information on time constraints for NOK notification, notifying parties or designated contacts person, and ultimate disposition of unclaimed remains. Several systems had no accessible policies.ConclusionsAcross the US, carceral systems vary in policies for notifying NOK after the death of an incarcerated individual and their processes for the disposition of remains. Carceral and health systems should work towards standardization of policies on communication and disposition of remains after death of an individual who is incarcerated to work towards equity.

A politics of conviction: The refusal of colonial carcerality in Palestinian graffiti

In this visual essay, I curate and annotate nine photos of Palestinian prisoner graffiti, foregrounding a Palestinian politics of conviction. Prisoner graffiti is a prominent genre of Palestinian street art, countering Israel's system of colonial carcerality that attempts to dispossess and displace Palestinians. Israeli colonial carcerality functions not only through the “small prison” of Israeli detention, but through the “large prison” of Israeli colonial occupation and apartheid. The distinct forms that this incarceration takes across the fragments of Palestine—from the lands occupied in 1948, 1967, and the diaspora—all aim to crush a Palestinian will to resist. Israel works to construct its carceral systems as inescapable, suggesting to Palestinians that they have no choice but to submit to their colonisation. Against this colonial carcerality, we find in Palestinian prisoner graffiti what I term a politics of conviction. Persisting through their conviction and imprisonment under Israeli colonial law, Palestinians cultivate a conviction in liberation. Directly countering the apparent inevitability of incarceration and the reification of carceral systems, this politics of conviction asserts the inevitability of al-ḥurriya (freedom) from both the small prison and the large prison. This conviction in liberation is constituted by a range of feelings, including love for the prisoner and the dignity that they embody. I suggest that this politics of conviction might form the affective basis of a distinctly Palestinian abolitionism—working to abolish the colonial structures that uphold both the small and large prisons.

Towards abolitionist agrarian geographies of Kentucky

This agrarian geography of Kentucky begins on the streets of the state's largest city, in the throes of antiracist struggle. It tracks the state's lingering colonial settler power dynamics through the racism of plantation, extraction, and carceral geographies. It then traces how resistance to these exploitations take root in place-based agri-food initiatives unfolding through urban-rural solidarity against white supremacist policing, prison systems, labor exploitation, and extractivism. It begins with a brief overview of the scale of reference of Kentucky itself. Situating the state entails addressing the trauma and topophilia (love of landscape) of its agrarian past and present. It draws upon bell hooks’ literary invocations of Kentucky-based agrarian visions, as well as place-based political ecology scholarship (seven years of Kentucky Agrarian Questions practitioner panels at the Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference at University of Kentucky). Following Black and abolitionist geographies, this agrarian geography traces rural and urban shared struggles for food sovereignty, environmental justice, and liberation from racism of carceral systems. It introduces Kentucky grassroots projects connecting and uniting rural and urban struggles against carceral violence and the racism therein, such as Hood to the Holler (a political initiative emerging from Black Lives Matter mobilizations for Breonna Taylor). The essay ends with reflections on the political-ecological contradictions and imperative of working through and beyond a settler-colonial-state scale of reference like Kentucky. To extricate from and dismantle plantation modes and carceral legacies, abolitionist agrarian geographies recover the reality of Black and Indigenous agrarian history, presence, and futures. As such, rooted in place-based reckoning, resistance, and responsibility, they offer hope.

Nursing as total institution.

Healthcare under the auspices of late-stage capitalism is a total institution that mortifies nurses and patients alike, demanding conformity, obedience, perfection. This capture, which resembles Deleuze's enclosure, entangles nurses in carceral systems and gives way to a postenclosure society, an institution without walls. These societies of control constitute another sort of total institution, more covert and insidious for their invisibility (Deleuze, 1992). While Delezue (1992) named physical technologies like electronic identification badges as key to understanding these societies of control, the political economy of late-stage capitalism functions as a total institution with no cohesive, centralized, connected material apparatus required. In this manuscript, we outline the ways in which the healthcare industrial complex demands nurse conformity and how that, in turn, operationalizes nurses in service to the institution. This foundation leads to the assertion that nursing must foster a radical imagination for itself, unbound by reality as it presently exists, in order that we might conjure more just, equitable futures for caregivers and care receivers alike. To tease out what a radical imagination might look like, we dwell in paradox: getting folks the care they need in capitalist healthcare systems; engaging nursing's deep history to inspire alternative understandings for the future of the discipline; and how nursing might divest from extractive institutional structures. This paper is a jumping-off place to interrogate the ways institutions telescope and where nursing fits into the arrangement.

Where Were the Social Workers? A Historical Overview of the Social Work Profession’s Complicity in the Family Policing System

In recent years, segments of the social work profession have highlighted the ways that social workers are complicit with carceral systems, including the foster care system. Following the advocacy of impacted families and communities, social workers have increasingly called for re-examination of standard social work practices such as mandated reporting. This paper seeks to strengthen historical understanding of the social work profession’s complicity in the creation of the modern family policing system, commonly known as the child welfare system. In particular, this paper explores the impacts of the anti-communist movements on social work advocacy and practice during crucial periods of racial and economic reckoning, with an emphasis on the profession’s complicity with the 1960s-era criminalization of the Black family structure.

Dismantling Structural Racism in Child and Adolescent Psychology: A Call to Action to Transform Healthcare, Education, Child Welfare, and the Psychology Workforce to Effectively Promote BIPOC Youth Health and Development

ABSTRACT The field of clinical child and adolescent psychology is in critical need of transformation to effectively meet the mental health needs of marginalized and minoritized youth. As a field, we must acknowledge and grapple with the racist and colonial structures that support the scientific foundation, education and training of psychologists, and the service systems currently in place to support youth mental health in this country. We argue that to effectuate change toward a discipline that centers inclusivity, intersectionality, anti-racism, and social justice, there are four interrelated systems, structures, or processes that currently support racial inequity and would need to be thoroughly examined, dismantled, and re-imagined: (1) the experience of mental health problems and corresponding access to quality care; (2) the school-to-mental healthcare pathway; (3) the child welfare and carceral systems; and (4) the psychology workforce. A “call to action” is issued to address structural racism in these systems and recommendations are provided to guide clinicians, health care systems, educators, welfare and carceral systems, and those involved in training and retaining psychologists in the field in actions they can take to contribute to transformation. We assert that change will only occur when we individually and collectively take responsibility for the roles we have as agents for radical change within the personal and professional contexts in which we live and work. Only then will the field of clinical child and adolescent psychology be able to address the youth mental health crisis and effectively promote the health and well-being of all children.

Personal Health Libraries for People Returning From Incarceration: Protocol for a Qualitative Study.

Individuals released from carceral facilities have high rates of hospitalization and death, especially in the weeks immediately after their return to community settings. During this transitional process, individuals leaving incarceration are expected to engage with multiple providers working in separate, complex systems, including health care clinics, social service agencies, community-based organizations, and probation and parole services. This navigation is often complicated by individuals' physical and mental health, literacy and fluency, and socioeconomic status. Personal health information technology, which can help people access and organize their health information, could improve the transition from carceral systems to the community and mitigate health risks upon release. Yet, personal health information technologies have not been designed to meet the needs and preferences of this population nor tested for acceptability or use. The objective of our study is to develop a mobile app to create personal health libraries for individuals returning from incarceration to help bridge the transition from carceral settings to community living. Participants were recruited through Transitions Clinic Network clinic encounters and professional networking with justice-involved organizations. We used qualitative research methods to assess the facilitators and barriers to developing and using personal health information technology for individuals returning from incarceration. We conducted individual interviews with people just released from carceral facilities (n=~20) and providers (n=~10) from the local community and carceral facilities involved with the transition for returning community members. We used rigorous rapid qualitative analysis to generate thematic output characterizing the unique circumstances impacting the development and use of personal health information technology for individuals returning from incarceration and to identify content and features for the mobile app based on the preferences and needs of our participants. As of February 2023, we have completed 27 qualitative interviews with individuals recently released from carceral systems (n=20) and stakeholders (n=7) who support justice-involved individuals from various organizations in the community. We anticipate that the study will characterize the experiences of people transitioning from prison and jails to community settings; describe the information, technology resources, and needs upon reentry to the community; and create potential pathways for fostering engagement with personal health information technology. DERR1-10.2196/44748.

Identifying abolitionist alignments in community psychology: A path toward transformation.

Psychology is grounded in the ethical principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence, that is, "do no harm." Yet many have argued that psychology as a field is attached to carceral systems and ideologies that uphold the prison industrial complex (PIC), including the field of community psychology (CP). There have been recent calls in other areas of psychology to transform the discipline into an abolitionist social science, but this discourse is nascent in CP. This paper uses the semantic device of "algorithms" (e.g., conventions to guide thinking and decision-making) to identify the areas of alignment and misalignment between abolition and CP in the service of moving us toward greater alignment. The authors propose that many in CP are already oriented to abolition because of our values and theories of empowerment, promotion, and systems change; our areas of misalignment between abolition and CP hold the potential to evolve. We conclude with proposing implications for the field of CP, including commitments to the belief that (1) the PIC cannot be reformed, and (2) abolition must be aligned with other transnational liberation efforts (e.g., decolonization).

Unpacking the Prison Food Paradox: Formerly Incarcerated Individuals’ Experience of Food within Federal Prisons in Canada

This paper presents findings from a survey conducted with formerly incarcerated individuals on their experiences of food and food systems within federal prisons in Canada. Beyond affirming the many problems with the quality and quantity of food provided to incarcerated individuals, the findings discussed in this article highlight the multi-faceted and paradoxical role of food behind bars. Food was a tool of punishment and a site of conflict, yet it simultaneously provides an important source of community and camaraderie. While there can be no “just” carceral food system because carceral systems are inherently unjust systems, a conversation about food provisioning within prison helps bring into focus opportunities to improve the material conditions of incarcerated individuals in the short-term as well as openings to question the logic and legitimacy of carceral institutions more broadly. As we are all bound-up in carceral food systems, there is a collective responsibility to interrogate and make visible the realities of carceral food systems in order to work towards non-carceral futures.

Interrogating the carceral state: Re-envisioning social work’s role in systems serving children and youth

This paper traces social work’s historical and current relationships with three major child and youth serving carceral systems in the United States—the child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, and school policing. In each section, we examine the racialized origins of these systems and the current practices that perpetuate racial harm, particularly for Black children, youth and families. Given this knowledge, we consider if social work’s stated professional values to oppose racism, injustice, and oppression can exist alongside the carceral practices that these systems perpetuate. The article concludes with critical questions and guidance for the future of the profession.

Introduction

Introduction Dayo F. Gore (bio) and Christina B. Hanhardt (bio) In 2020 the Movement for Black Lives, drawing on what it describes as an "ecosystem of over 170 organizations," relaunched its 2016 Vision for Black Lives platform to build "political will and power" (Movement for Black Lives 2020). Two aspects of the platform stand out to us: first, that an intersectional analysis is at the center of all demands; and second, that "the state" is theorized as a source of punishment that activists reject and as a set of resources that activists might make claims upon. Given our respective research on twentieth-century U.S. social movements (Christina on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activism, and Dayo on Black women's radicalism and the U.S. Left) and investments in contemporary left movements, these issues have long preoccupied our work on and engagement with political organizing. In the last three years the stakes have only intensified. Social and economic conditions in the United States and around the globe demonstrate the necessity of addressing categories of difference while confronting state power, its resources, and institutional reach. From abolitionist demands to "defund the police and invest in communities" to calls for protecting rights such as access to abortion and health care, these years of pandemic, protests, and legal mandates have laid bare the power of the state to shape everyday life and survival. This is especially the case in the context of the recalibration of neoliberalism and white nationalism. Counter to claims on the left and right that identity politics stand in contrast to class politics, or that movements named by single-identity frames are necessarily delimited, many activist responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and leadership during the Black Lives Matter uprisings of the [End Page 11] summer of 2020 treated race, gender, sexuality, and class as tightly interwoven social categories that are essential to building justice movements and radical change. In addition, many of these movements have directly engaged the state, be that in supporting socialist- and progressive-identified political candidates or demanding economic resources for state health infrastructure, even as they have also participated in local mutual aid networks and called for the end of carceral systems, borders, and even the U.S. nation-state itself. We have been struck by how these organizing efforts speak to histories that we have studied of political movements that center identity and economic politics and also urge a revisiting of the ways states mobilize power and belonging through interconnected systems of benefits, discipline, and violence. In considering this special issue we were inspired by important debates about the state that have long animated social movement organizing as well as left and feminist scholarship, such as the place of liberal reforms in radical strategy, the value or limits of centralization and seeding electoral power from below, the challenges of forging new visions on an international scale while sustaining local engagement, and how to recognize the state's co-optation of radical terms without ceding discursive and political ground. We also sought to highlight scholarship and activism emerging from feminists of color that have long made visible the capitalist state's use of social locations beyond class to structure resource distribution. We seek in this issue on State/Power to provide productive insights and provoke further conversation. The articles that follow reroute expected histories and dominant discourses about state power and track how people, particularly Black and other racialized communities, have organized in response. They also take up some precise issues from recent years that have been at the forefront of discussions about the state, such as practices of mutual aid and collective care, the expansion of state punishment alongside the retraction of public resources, and the relationship between local, federal, and global power. Throughout, they explore what directly engaging the state might offer and restrict, and they do so with an attentiveness to identity and difference. The first two articles approach these issues through an analysis of the place of bodily regulation in the operation of the carceral state. In "'The Potential That Was in All of Us': Carceral Disability and the Japanese American Redress Movement," Adria L. Imada looks at how...

Necropolitics as accumulation: Enforcement and enclosure in Brisbane during COVID-19

This article explores the uneven impacts that Indigenous and detained migrant populations have endured in Australia in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Australia has one of the most restrictive immigration enforcement systems in the world. Along with imposing practices of mandatory detention in rural and remote regions, the Australian government finances the carceral systems of nearby countries and island nations. These logics of enforcement are embedded within histories and techniques of Indigenous quarantine, incarceration, and colonial erasure. Following Achille Mbembe (2019), I advance a theoretical framework of ‘necropolitics as accumulation.’ I argue that rather than disposable or ‘wasted’ populations, those subject to slow violence are within heightened circuits of accumulation. I draw on long-term ethnographic research in Brisbane to emphasize the intensification of governing measures that not only inflict slow death but also make a profit from capitalizing on it. People are kept alive through precarious visa statuses and in prisons, detention centers, camps, remote communities, reserves, and other institutional facilities in relation to their utility for capital, even as death in such spaces is inescapable. In focusing on racial capitalism, I center the differential experiences of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people from COVID-19 in long-standing histories of capitalist exploitation. By attending to the cross-cutting ways in which people are prevented from participating in society, made plain in the pandemic, I call for intersectional advocacy that works towards collective flourishing.

Racial justice in psycholegal research and forensic psychology practice: Current advances and a framework for future progress.

Police killings of Black civilians have brought unprecedented attention to racial and ethnic discrimination in the criminal justice and legal systems. However, these topics have been underexamined in the field of law-psychology, both in research and forensic-clinical practice. We discuss how a racial justice framework can provide guidance for advancing psycholegal research and forensic-clinical practice related to race, ethnicity, culture, and their intersections. A racial justice framework centers the goal of increasing fair and responsive treatment and just outcomes for the most vulnerable populations involved with the criminal justice, legal, and carceral systems and ending existing disparities. We argue that the framework should include the use of transparent nonobjectivity, in which racial justice is an explicit and acknowledged goal of research and practice that exists alongside a commitment to open and rigorous science and evidence-based practice. We then use the racial justice framework as a backdrop for discussing the articles and broader themes that appear in the special issue, which include racial biases in policing, public views of the police and use of force, expanding research on racial bias in lay judgments, understanding disparities in sentencing and corrections, and improving forensic practice. Finally, we look to the future, discussing practices and perspectives that can facilitate a racial justice approach in psycholegal research and forensic-clinical practice. Our recommendations include engaging in reflexivity and addressing positionality; expanding research questions and methods, especially qualitative and community-based participatory action research; centering and engaging with communities of color; greater emphasis on intersectionality; shifting toward structural and adaptive interventions; and greater integration of work from other fields. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

An Ethic of Abolition

This paper addresses the uncanny resemblance between the educational industrial complex and the US carceral state. Both schools and prisons comprise carceral apparatuses that use policies, pedagogies, and practices to respond punitively to com­munal transgressions. Moreover, architectural designs and fiscal budgets further reveal symmetries that make learning communities unsafe and complicit with carceral systems. Black and Brown people are disproportionately caught in the frays of punitive disparities, targeted violence, and stereotypes of deviance that drastically impede social thriving. Ergo, this paper responds to the inextricability of punishment that link classrooms to prisons by introducing an abolitionist theological ethic to create educational sanctuaries.

Colonial Goals Through Colonial Gaols: The Imperative of Indigenous Self- Centred Self-Determination for Indigenous Decarceration

Indigenous hyperincarceration is a widely documented global phenomenon that continues to attract significant research attention. Much of this research, however, fails to accurately contextualise Indigenous imprisonment within the ongoing colonial project; instead, it frames colonisation as a historical event of only distal relevance to contemporary Indigenous incarceration levels. This article rejects this premise and scrutinises the coloniality of the modern prison. Drawing on illustrations from two case study jurisdictions, Australia and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), this article frames the imprisonment of Indigenous people in colonial carceral systems as an ongoing violation of the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination. Building on Fanon’s conceptualisation of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’, this article introduces the concepts of ‘Colonial Self-centred self-determination’ and ‘Indigenous Self-centred self-determination’. Colonial prisons, it argues, are part of so-called ‘justice’ systems that are imbued with the values and interests of the Colonial Self, not the Indigenous Self. Indigenous hyperincarceration in such institutions is inevitable and wholly consistent with the prison’s Colonial Self-centric episteme. Colonial gaols are repositories of colonial goals. This article concludes that addressing Indigenous hyperincarceration requires a fundamental shift in the terms upon which colonial states engage with Indigenous nations: that is, Indigenous decarceration requires Indigenous Self-centred self-determination.

Layered Sites of Environmental Justice: Considering the Case of Prisons*

A growing body of scholarship highlights the merits of fusing green criminology and environmental justice frameworks to better understand intersections among carceral systems, race‐ and class‐based stratification, and environmental harm. This paper explores how correctional institutions (CIs) with known histories of federal environmental law violations compare against other previously established environmentally harmful facilities and land uses. In this article, we ask: are prisons and other CIs that have violated federal environmental laws located proximate to areas where there is evidence of existing high‐pollution facilities? Relatedly, are CIs that have established noncompliant histories with federal environmental laws located in similarly marginalized and disadvantaged communities compared to other traditionally defined sites of environmental injustice and harm? To answer these questions, we utilize data from the EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. Our findings provide evidence that, within our sample of facilities that have recorded noncompliance with federal environmental laws, CIs are significantly more likely to be located proximate to Superfund sites than most of the other facility types/land uses and more likely to be located in communities with racially minoritized populations. Our findings have important implications for further research on carceral systems and environmental justice.