A Texas State prison unit is submerged by water from the flooded Brazos River in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Friday, Sept. 1, 2017, in Rosharon, Texas Credit: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
More than 270,000 individuals are housed in correctional facilities located in areas at significant risk for extreme weather events, with heat posing the greatest threat.
Women, juveniles, and ICE detainees in correctional facilities in five Gulf Coast states are vulnerable to threats from extreme heat, flooding, and hurricanes, a Yale School of the Environment study found. Despite the threats, many of the facilities have no disaster preparedness plans.
The study, conducted by doctoral candidate Faith Taylor and published in Southeast Geographer, examined natural disaster risks at 332 correctional facilities across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida that have the highest incarceration rates in the U.S. The analysis, based on data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Heat and Heat-related Illness (HHI) maps from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), revealed that:
“There is increasing research regarding how socio-economic demographic variables such as race, gender, disability, age, and socioeconomic status can exacerbate vulnerability to the impacts of natural disasters, but the expanded conception of vulnerability doesn’t include the incarcerated," Taylor said.
Incarcerated people often sit at the margins of society and are often left out of discourse about vulnerability to natural disasters.”
Despite the risks, there are very few federal policies that require any emergency management plans for incarcerated populations.
On a state level, only six out of 40 states reviewed by researchers in a 2022 study on emergency management plans included incarcerated populations in natural disaster preparedness. The federal Correctional Facility Disaster Preparedness Act introduced in 2020 and 2023, which would require damage assessment reports and improved emergency plans, has not passed Congress.
Often, disaster preparedness plans that do include incarcerated populations only discuss how detainees will provide labor for cleanup efforts. Working at the scene of disasters can expose them to additional hazards, the study found.
“All of these risks add up to a cumulative exposure that is likely a lot greater than what non-incarcerated communities in the surrounding area are experiencing,” Taylor said.
Overcrowding, lack of air conditioning, and increasing temperatures due to global warming are exacerbating heat risks, Taylor noted. More than 40 facilities of the 332 examined in the study are operating at 100% capacity or greater, and 65 are operating between 90-100% capacity. Most prisons in Florida, Texas, and Alabama do not have air conditioning.
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While the threat of hurricanes has been the focus of previous research on incarcerated populations, riverine flooding is more of a widespread threat, Taylor found. At least 19,734 detainees are housed in facilities that are located in very high-risk areas for flooding.
The study points to the need for changes in zoning laws to prevent additional correctional facilities from being built in high-risk areas, reducing incarceration rates to address overcrowding, mandating the installation of air conditioning, requiring disaster preparedness plans, and the pursuit of further study on why correctional facilities are located in areas at risk of natural disasters, Taylor said.
“Incarcerated people have been advocating against poor conditions inside of correctional spaces since the onset of the modern prisons,” she said. “We need to view these conditions inside prisons within a lens of environmental risk.”
