Activists celebrate move as an advance in the struggle to recognize the environmental rights of incarcerated people.
America's Toxic Prisons
Truthout and Earth Island Journal investigate the sites of some of the worst environmental injustices: prisons. The prison-industrial complex devastates communities and the environment, taking serious and sometimes life-threatening tolls on human health.
"We are alive barely" says one prisoner in Beaumont, Texas.
Deadly heat, unsafe water, black mold and cockroaches plague prisoners at many Texas prisons.
The immigrant jail in Tacoma, Washington, is in an area so polluted it was designated unfit for residences.
Prison would have been terrible for health of prisoners and local wildlife, say advocates.
In Texas prisons, the price of climate denial is human lives.
US prisons may be largely hidden from sight, but their environmental toxicity spreads far beyond their walls.
Prisons are sites of some of the worst environmental injustices in this country.