POISONED INSIDE AND OUT
Landfill Land Swap and the Devastating Impact of Environmental Realism on Prison Population
by Terri L. Crawford, JD
Prison Policy Initiative statistics show Nebraska has an incarceration rate of 601 per 100,000 people (including prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile justice facilities). Translation: Nebraska locks up a higher percentage of its people than almost any democratic country on earth. (Prison Policy Initiative, 2022). According to an Omaha World-Herald article, North Omaha neighborhoods produce some of the highest incarceration rates found anywhere in the country, as shown in a World-Herald analysis of Harvard University data. In a 2010 snapshot of people behind bars, more than a half dozen North Omaha census tracts produced higher rates of male incarceration than any in South Central Los Angeles (Omaha World-Herald, Henry Cordes – March 6, 2023). We know through the research that there is a correlation between historically redlined areas and the rate of incarceration in those census tracts due to policies, practices, and processes that coded neighborhoods, beginning in the 1930s, based on racial composition and racially restrictive covenants.
Now, Nebraska will be building a new 1,500-bed prison to replace Nebraska’s aging penitentiary. According to news accounts, it was originally planned to be built on the northeast edge of Lincoln, near the Lancaster Event Center. (Lincoln Journal Star, August 2023). Due to some controversy and backlash from residents who live nearby in several neighborhoods, there was a second announcement that state and city officials entered what has been described as a “land swap” agreement to move the site of the new prison away from one of the fastest-growing parts of northeast Lincoln to a city-owned site about seven miles away, just north of Interstate 80—and just east of the city landfill. This “land swap” joint announcement was made by Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird and Gov. Jim Pillen less than two weeks after the governor said the prison would be built near the Lancaster Events Center.
Why is this important? Here’s why. Our national prison population, too frequently affected and neglected, often faces environmental harm because many prisons are intentionally built near or directly on abandoned industrial sites, places deemed fit only for dumping toxic materials. One-third (32%) of state and federal prisons are located within three miles of federal Superfund sites, the most seriously contaminated places requiring extensive cleanup. It is also well known that this proximity is linked to lower life expectancy and a litany of illnesses, and it is ill-advised to live, work, or go to schools near Superfund sites. As a result of being on or near wastelands and landfills, prisons constantly expose those inside to serious environmental hazards, from tainted water to harmful air pollutants. These conditions manifest in health conditions and deaths that are unmistakably linked to those hazards. (Leah Wang, Prison Policy Initiative, April 20, 2022).
For example, in western Pennsylvania, a state prison located on top of a coal waste deposit has done permanent damage, causing skin rashes, sores, cysts, gastrointestinal problems, and cancer, with symptoms often appearing soon after arrival at the facility. (Human Rights Coalition, 2014).
The devastating health outcomes at one prison in Louisiana were a smoking gun for environmental injustice — or a smoking tire, in this case. Laborde Correctional Center’s neighbor, an abandoned tire landfill, caught fire and burned for four days before the prison decided to evacuate. The state’s environmental agency and the tire company are on the hook for failing to address compliance issues. (The Intercept, March 2022).
Nebraska has 17 active Superfund sites; 13 are currently in the cleanup phase, and four sites are in the site study phase. (Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy, aka DEE, website). It is overwhelmingly evident from the research that people in prison tend to come from redlined, disadvantaged, and criminalized communities. These are the same communities bearing the brunt of the burden of environmental injustice. Using the criminal legal system to move people from the environmental hazards deliberately imposed on redlined communities to similar or more extreme hazards in prisons is a practice with enormous moral and fiscal costs.
We now know much more than we did about the potential exposure of incarcerated populations to harmful environmental conditions. Numerous studies now identify the proximity of prisons to potentially hazardous sites; for example, one shows that in nine western states of the United States, juvenile detention centers are in close proximity to hazardous waste (‘Superfund’) sites. (United States. Environ. Justice 2020, 13, 65–74).
This dialogue is not about whether or not you believe building a new prison is a solution to our high numbers of incarcerated individuals. Rather, why did Nebraska choose a site next to a toxic landfill where the “inhabitants” have no choice but to live with environmental injustice?
Prison Policy Initiative statistics show Nebraska has an incarceration rate of 601 per 100,000 people (including prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile justice facilities). Translation: Nebraska locks up a higher percentage of its people than almost any democratic country on earth. (Prison Policy Initiative, 2022). According to an Omaha World-Herald article, North Omaha neighborhoods produce some of the highest incarceration rates found anywhere in the country, as shown in a World-Herald analysis of Harvard University data. In a 2010 snapshot of people behind bars, more than a half dozen North Omaha census tracts produced higher rates of male incarceration than any in South Central Los Angeles (Omaha World-Herald, Henry Cordes – March 6, 2023). We know through the research that there is a correlation between historically redlined areas and the rate of incarceration in those census tracts due to policies, practices, and processes that coded neighborhoods, beginning in the 1930s, based on racial composition and racially restrictive covenants.
Now, Nebraska will be building a new 1,500-bed prison to replace Nebraska’s aging penitentiary. According to news accounts, it was originally planned to be built on the northeast edge of Lincoln, near the Lancaster Event Center. (Lincoln Journal Star, August 2023). Due to some controversy and backlash from residents who live nearby in several neighborhoods, there was a second announcement that state and city officials entered what has been described as a “land swap” agreement to move the site of the new prison away from one of the fastest-growing parts of northeast Lincoln to a city-owned site about seven miles away, just north of Interstate 80—and just east of the city landfill. This “land swap” joint announcement was made by Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird and Gov. Jim Pillen less than two weeks after the governor said the prison would be built near the Lancaster Events Center.
Why is this important? Here’s why. Our national prison population, too frequently affected and neglected, often faces environmental harm because many prisons are intentionally built near or directly on abandoned industrial sites, places deemed fit only for dumping toxic materials. One-third (32%) of state and federal prisons are located within three miles of federal Superfund sites, the most seriously contaminated places requiring extensive cleanup. It is also well known that this proximity is linked to lower life expectancy and a litany of illnesses, and it is ill-advised to live, work, or go to schools near Superfund sites. As a result of being on or near wastelands and landfills, prisons constantly expose those inside to serious environmental hazards, from tainted water to harmful air pollutants. These conditions manifest in health conditions and deaths that are unmistakably linked to those hazards. (Leah Wang, Prison Policy Initiative, April 20, 2022).
For example, in western Pennsylvania, a state prison located on top of a coal waste deposit has done permanent damage, causing skin rashes, sores, cysts, gastrointestinal problems, and cancer, with symptoms often appearing soon after arrival at the facility. (Human Rights Coalition, 2014).
The devastating health outcomes at one prison in Louisiana were a smoking gun for environmental injustice — or a smoking tire, in this case. Laborde Correctional Center’s neighbor, an abandoned tire landfill, caught fire and burned for four days before the prison decided to evacuate. The state’s environmental agency and the tire company are on the hook for failing to address compliance issues. (The Intercept, March 2022).
Nebraska has 17 active Superfund sites; 13 are currently in the cleanup phase, and four sites are in the site study phase. (Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy, aka DEE, website). It is overwhelmingly evident from the research that people in prison tend to come from redlined, disadvantaged, and criminalized communities. These are the same communities bearing the brunt of the burden of environmental injustice. Using the criminal legal system to move people from the environmental hazards deliberately imposed on redlined communities to similar or more extreme hazards in prisons is a practice with enormous moral and fiscal costs.
We now know much more than we did about the potential exposure of incarcerated populations to harmful environmental conditions. Numerous studies now identify the proximity of prisons to potentially hazardous sites; for example, one shows that in nine western states of the United States, juvenile detention centers are in close proximity to hazardous waste (‘Superfund’) sites. (United States. Environ. Justice 2020, 13, 65–74).
This dialogue is not about whether or not you believe building a new prison is a solution to our high numbers of incarcerated individuals. Rather, why did Nebraska choose a site next to a toxic landfill where the “inhabitants” have no choice but to live with environmental injustice?
