Prison as social sink in the treadmill of production

Abstract

Prisons have been understudied as sites of environmental inquiry. This article draws on cases of toxic prisons and the literature on critical environmental justice and carceral studies to propose a new theoretical concept linking the carceral state and environmental degradation: prisons as a social sink. I show how prisons operate as a social sink that: 1) reorganizes surpluses around the containment and salvaging of social waste, 2) reproduces sacrifice zones, and 3) spills over in the form of exposure to toxics and extreme climate events. The prison sink framework conceptualizes prisons as institutional mechanisms within treadmill societies that manage social crises produced by capitalist accumulation, while remaining structurally bound to the ongoing generation and management of environmental crises.