Abolition in the Era of Climate Change

Climate change is looming over the planet. It feeds the South's already-suffocating humidity and causes longer, hotter summers; more extreme colds; an uptick in floods and wildfires; and increasingly severe and frequent rainfalls. And in this current climate crisis, a heavy rain—or worse, a hurricane—is never just that. For incarcerated people in Texas, a state that has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world and lacks proper air conditioning in more than two-thirds of its prisons, a climate disaster or bout of extreme weather isn't just unsafe, it's deadly. 

"Every crisis that we're currently up against is going to disproportionately impact people who are currently incarcerated because people in positions of power are going to pay them the littlest amount of regard," said Hannah Whelan, the archives director at Texas After Violence Project. "And as climate change is impacting every subsequent crisis, we're going to continue to see increasing death tolls and just increase in general suffering within prisons, jails, and detention centers."

Extreme temperatures are disproportionately harming incarcerated persons

According to research by Julie Skarha, an environmental epidemiologist at Brown University, 13 percent of deaths during the six hottest months every year from 2001 to 2019 were likely a result of extreme heat. The study also suggested that 271 prisoners died of heat-related causes in non-air-conditioned Texas prisons in the past two decades. A 2022 study found that 14 prison deaths per year were linked to heat. In 2023, a Texas Tribune analysis found that at least 41 people died in non-air-conditioned prisons during the state's heat wave.

Temperatures inside facilities have risen to as high as 149 degrees Fahrenheit. Climate change will only increase this number. 

Due to Texas' brutal heat and humidity, it's a "double jeopardy situation," according to Dr. Amite Dominick, the founder and director of Texas Prisons Community Advocates. "It's a real challenge. It's not uncommon to have several days of triple-digit weather. And when there's too much humidity in the air, your body isn't going to sweat as much to stave off the heat."

Robert Barnes, who is incarcerated in Freestone County, Texas, told the Prison Journalism Project in 2024 that the heat "attracts flies, which are annoying. While prisoners eat in the chow hall, they sweat and fight off flies." 

She continued: "On a recent summer day, I rushed to finish my food because I felt lightheaded. The local news reported temperatures at 100 degrees, but it felt hotter than that. If it's 100 degrees or worse in our dorms, I can't imagine how hot the chow hall is, with all the bodies packed in there and the heat from cooking. When I stood up to leave the chow hall, my head began to spin. I needed fresh, cooler air, but the fan near me was not working."

In 2021, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill to require prisons to maintain temperatures between 65 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit—the same standard for county jails—as long as lawmakers come up with the funds. But they didn't, and the bill eventually died. In February 2025, a similar bill specifying the same temperature range and requiring temperature gauges was introduced in Texas, but it has yet to pass.

Texas isn't alone in forcing these cruel conditions onto incarcerated people, as many states, including most states in the South, don't have universal air conditioning in prisons.

"Even though the heat can be deadly, the prison offers little respite," Derek R. Trumbo Sr., who's locked up in Kentucky, told Prison Journalism Project in 2024. "Our windows are riveted shut, and there are no trees in the yard to offer a single lick of shade. In the sweltering blister of summer, the prison's pastoral landscape—with its amazing sunrises and sunsets—only magnifies the sun's intensity." 

Severe weather impacts all aspects of life inside, from medication to warden retaliation

The effects of climate change are far beyond heat stroke, nausea, muscle cramps, and exhaustion, as a lack of air conditioning both directly and indirectly tends to worsen heart failure and suicide risk. People inside are regularly forced to make life-or-death negotiations for basic necessities, whether that's eating food spoiled from the severe heat or cold or deciding to take—or not take—medication altered by extreme temperatures within a system that doesn't provide them with medical assistance or care. 

In 2022, 28-year-old Matthew Shelton died of diabetic ketoacidosis because he didn't have access to his medication nor insulin, both of which he brought with him when he turned himself in at Houston's Harris County Jail.

"We've heard about how climate change is impacting people inside oftentimes is based on an immediate need for survival—an immediate need for air conditioning, a desire to not want to drink water or eat food inside," Whelan said. "We constantly hear about the choices that people must make between necessity, desire, and life. 'Will I give up every ounce of comfort that I have at this moment so that in a week, I might have some comfort?'"

Incarcerated people who are older than 55, prescribed psychotropic medications, or on medication for high blood pressure are also particularly vulnerable to heat. Retaliation—for example, not turning on the air conditioning or heat, if prisons have them, or not allowing those incarcerated to take frequent showers—is also an issue, as many policies are at the warden's discretion.

"I had letters from wardens that said that they weren't giving individual showers," said Dominick, who, in 2022, received around 900 pieces of mail from those inside. "During the heat, they have to give incarcerated folks showers whenever they need it, but some wardens just don't."

A climate disaster can often mean no visitation as well. "Everything just comes to a standstill," said Rusty Sloane, an organizer with Houston's Jailhouse Justice. If a hurricane is severe enough, these cages lose power. No power means incarcerated folks lose light, ventilation, and air conditioning—if they had access to these things in the first place. Toilets get backed up and no one is able to pump the water through the plumbing system. 

Dominick said that in the past few years, certain prisons have started to relocate individuals during warnings of severe hurricanes. "Because of the amount of limited resources, whenever there is a climate-related crisis, those resources just aren't getting funneled in through the prison system."

Similarly, with extremely cold temperatures and snow, roofs cave in, sewage clogs toilets, and pipes burst throughout prison systems. "The way our prison system is set up, and because there aren't many policies in place on dealing with extreme hazards, those incarcerated feel the brunt of both extreme heat and cold," said Dominick. 

For example, 23-year-old Jaquaree Simmons was killed in Harris County Jail during Houston's February 2021 freeze. The jail lost power for two days during the winter storm. Water pressure was lost, toilets were backed up, and there was feces collecting in the cells' toilets, causing some of them to flood. Jaquaree was accused of intentionally blocking his toilet and flooding his cell and as a result, was brutally beaten by guards. After his cell was cleaned, the jail still didn't have electricity, and he was returned to the freezing temperatures with no clothes. A short time after that, he was found unresponsive and declared dead the next day.

"When you lose power in prison or jail, it just becomes one big concrete building," said Sloane. "We [on the outside] have to deal with climate disasters like hurricanes, winter storms, and the grid going down, but all those problems are made even worse when you're locked up because you lose control of your own life."

Prisons and jails are built on sites of ecological degradation

The lethality of many prisons, jails, and detention centers also lies in the cages' infrastructures, as many are built on toxic wastelands or sites that have already been destroyed by climate change, improper agricultural practices, and climate disasters. Damaged landscapes are intimately linked to capitalism, slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, as they all have—and continue to—turn nature into natural resources and then exploit them.

Rikers Island is built on a landfill. In western Pennsylvania, state prison SCI Fayette sits on top of a coal waste deposit, causing rashes, gastrointestinal problems, and even cancer. Laborde Correctional Center in Louisiana is placed next to a tire landfill, which caught fire and burned for four days before the prison was evacuated, doing permanent health damage to the people trapped inside.

"Beyond being in a crisis or a matter of neglect, we've gotten to a point where politicians, prison administrators, and lawmakers are indicating that they're okay with the massive death tolls in prisons, jails, and detention centers," said Whelan.

These facilities have also proven that they don't respond to climate emergencies with any sort of urgency. In Louisiana, which is often referred to as the "world's prison capital" due to its high incarceration rate, incarcerated folks were trapped in flooding buildings and cut off from communication with loved ones, as the state had little to no disaster planning in place for its large prison and jail populations. When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017, several thousand incarcerated people were forced to wait out the storm in their jails and prisons, with few supplies and no power or plumbing. Harvey also caused flooding, putting courtrooms out of commission, and causing detained people to have to wait in jail longer and be in limbo.

The prison industrial complex is intentional

These various instances of violence and neglect are all purposeful because the prison industrial complex itself—and all its related systems, like capitalism and systemic racism—are intentionally put in place to continue to benefit those in power and slowly kill those who are deemed "criminals." The political sphere rewards people for supposedly having society's interests at heart. Then, the United States' prisons, jails, immigration practices, and surveillance methods all monitor and eventually punish people for being "bad" or going against society's interest.

"In the determination of who's good and who's bad, we also make determinations about where resources go," Whelan explained. "If you are on the side that's deemed bad, not only are you not given access to necessary funding, but you're relied upon to produce the labor that will, in effect, produce money for those that are deemed good—like our politicians and public figures."

And the United States has the biggest prison system for a reason: to maintain empire. The determination of who is bad and good is a colonial activity, and the prison system is imperial law, keeping politicians wealthy and in power, keeping folks unorganized and unaware of their people's power and abilities to resist. 

Anyone who is involved in forced prison labor or goods and services produced through the prison industrial complex is ultimately benefiting from these systems. For example, a lot of public libraries and universities are using furniture made in jails and prisons. The Associated Press tied prison labor to the supply chains of several other companies, like Walmart, Target, Costco, and McDonald's, just to name a few. And there's a link between those who benefit from climate change and those who benefit from the prison industrial complex. 

"Anyone who is involved in racial capitalism—which is all of us who aren't formerly or currently incarcerated—is benefitting from this, just in the same way we're all benefitting from the contributing factors to climate change, like running our homes off electricity and relying on water," she said.

Dominick, like many Black scholars, insists that prison labor is just another form of slavery. "According to the 13th Amendment, as it currently stands, [incarcerated folks] are still legally slaves. We still have slavery within this country. At the root of it, the prison systems captured these individuals so that they could continue to utilize them as slaves and keep them in the production change chain."

She continued: "Prison labor is the essence of capitalism within the United States. Because of it, there's this mentality of needing to force [incarcerated people] to work and 'pay off' the debt they have to society. With that, comes the idea that we must work incarcerated folks to the bone because they are essentially slaves."

Whelan said that politicians and other lawmakers favor the prison industrial complex as well. "Politicians who continue to circulate narratives about the 'rehabilitation potential' in prisons and jails also rely on the fact that people are suffering inside and therefore, not able to talk about what's going on."

Climate change will continue to impact who gets locked up

As climate change rages on—with experts saying that the number of extremely hot days will increase exponentially by the middle of the century—people, particularly those that prisons, jails, and detention centers prey on, won't be able to bounce back easily and may even be forced into "crimes" of survival. 

The prison system is meant to control who has access to resources. Instead of the state providing these necessities, they're perpetuating scarcity and criminalizing people, so they don't have what they need. The state will also continue to criminalize those who don't have access to basic needs, like unhoused people.

"Everyone's general level of desperation and panic is going to rise, and criminal legal systems rely on desperation and panic," Whelan said. "We'll see a lot of harnessing of climate-based anxiety to create larger law enforcement budgets and a deeper reliance on politicians."

Our infrastructures, including both physical buildings and roadways that people rely on to visit loved ones in prisons and jails, will continue to deteriorate or be blocked by drastic weather conditions.

As climate crisis after climate crisis continues to devastate the world's various economic systems, climate-based immigration and migration motives will increase as well. As climate migration rises, so will the subsequent arrests and surveillance that come with it. 

Severe weather events, like droughts or wildfires, make growing food more difficult and water more scarce, pushing many people into desperate situations and climate refugee status. Climate change is already fueling migration, and it's only expected to rise, as the world has not done enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt average temperature rise, causing more climate disasters and people being forced to leave their homes due to floods, heat waves, and even rising sea levels and water stress. 

According to the UN Refugee Agency, an annual average of 21.5 million people were forcibly displaced each year by extreme weather events and temperatures between 2008 and 2016. The Institute for Economics & Peace predicts that 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050 due to climate change and climate disasters.

Abolition and climate justice are linked

But climate and environmental justice can't exist without abolition.

"If history is our main indicator, it's just going to get worse unless people decide to pay attention to it and make some kind of a change," Dominick said. "More people are going to die and be mistreated. That's the very, very short version. That's what's going to happen."