Place / Drawing

In California, Climate Chaos Looms Over Prisons — and Thousands of Prisoners

How decades-old decisions to build two California prisons in a dry lakebed and a chaotic climate left 8,000 incarcerated people at risk.

by Susie Cagle via The Marshall Project on October 24, 2023

…

The same map shows that by the mid-20th century the lake, which periodically returned, had grown to more than 100 square miles after nearby rivers were dammed.

A series of flooding scenes, depicting floods and the square miles they covered, including 131 square miles in 1969, 130 in 1983, 50 in 1997 and 178 in 2023. An unseen ecologist named Rob Hansen says, “I don’t consider any of these floods to be floods.”

Hansen says, “We call it flooding because we took it over to put farms on it. But it’s a lake bottom, and lakes have water in them,” between two pictures that sh

Hansen, a White man with white hair and glasses, says, “It was just a haphazard series of events that led to the mess we’re in now.”

Black-colored wave-like brush strokes.

In 1984, lake bottom still full, Corcoran was hurting. A series of images depicts economic conditions, including 46% school enrollment and a boy sitting at a desk; a 28-35% unemployment rate and a line of workers; and a man reading a sign taped to a door that reads “$32 million in lost city revenue.”

A state prison building boom presented a permanent lifeline. A line chart that looks like a chain-link fence with barbed wire depicts the increase in the number of prisons opened per decade from the 1960s to the 1990s.

A White woman with dark brown hair and a red shirt named Jeanette Todd says, “The Central Valley and other poor areas became perfect areas to establish prisons.”

Todd was then-managing editor of The Corcoran Journal in the mid-1980s, when community meetings were held about prison construction in Corcoran. Images show scenes at a meeting and an official, who is a White man, says, “The local economy would be given a boost.”

Scenes of attendees saying, “Corcoran could use the help,” “The farm economy is as bad as I’ve ever seen it. Corcoran needs another anchor,” “A state prison is a non-polluting, recession-proof industry.” Any anti-prison sentiment was drowned out.

Todd says, “We’ve always been a poor community, an ag-based community, an underserved community. Of course, they wanted it” alongside scenes of farmland and a harvesting machine, and a man of medium skin tone in a white ball cap leans against a tractor.

A citizen committee recommended three potential sites. The Department of Corrections chose the one in the lakebed alongside the Tule River. An image shows two sites outside the floodplain and one within it.

Then, the Department of Corrections convinced Corcoran and Kings County to request that the prison be exempt from state environmental law. A hand is seen taking notes on a document, and a man shows paperwork to another man while saying, “speed up this process.”

Government, citizen oversight and consultants warned against it. The comments warned of “a Pandora’s Box,” “potentially significant impacts,” “flooding,” and “subsidence.” Each quote comes from a stack of books and reports.

A hand is seen clicking a yes vote. The Legislature approved it. A vote total in the Assembly was 65-8 and in the Senate was 36-0.

…

brought to you by

© Bunk History