Toxic prisons? Local environmental quality and the wellbeing of incarcerated populations

A growing body of scholarship draws attention to prisons and environmental justice, pointing out the propensity for prisons to be located on contaminated sites and proximate to polluting industries, as well as for prisons themselves to contribute to local environmental degradation. Prisoners’ immobility renders them unable to relocate away from harmful environments, and there are now numerous suggestions that their wellbeing suffers as a result of the poor quality of many local environments. However, since a relationship between environmental quality and prisoner wellbeing is yet to be robustly demonstrated, there is as yet no firm evidence base from which to argue for positive change. This paper therefore examines the effect of environmental quality, approximated as the presence of greenspace, local species biodiversity and local levels of air and noise pollution, on wellbeing outcomes. It finds that good environmental quality, in the form of high biodiversity and/or low air pollution, enhances the already-recognised positive effects of green space on the wellbeing of incarcerated populations. On the basis of these findings, the paper makes evidence-based policy recommendations intended to enhance the wellbeing of incarcerated populations.