On May 4, 2022, New Mexico State Hospital (a.k.a. New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute),
a
psychiatric
facility in Las Vegas, Nevada, was forced to evacuate as wildfires raged across the state and threatened
to
engulf the town. Almost 200 people had to evacuated from the facility. In Texas, a majority of jails,
prisons, and detention centers are in places with more than 50 days of 90-plus-degree heat indexes.
These
facilities are like ovens in the heat, and those inside are left without air condition or other ways to
get
cool amidst the rising temperatures.
These sweltering conditions and dangerous wildfires have a disproportionate impact on these
carceral
locales, enclosures like prisons, jails, detention centers, and psychiatric facilities. We
group
these types of facilities together becuase of the disabling nature of mass incarceration in the United
States and the pervasive logics of incarceration that characterize the lives of disabled and mad people
at
psychiatric facilities.
This map shows the impact of climate change related heat and wildfire risk and its impacts
on
carceral
locales across the U.S. Through this tool we hope to show how climate change disproportionately
impacts incarcerated people, and how carceral locales are on the frontlines of climate change. Scroll
down to
interact with the map and see where and how climate change impacts contribute to worsening conditions for those incarcerated.
Sources: The Marshall Project, The Intercept Climate and Punishment Project, Union of
Concerned Scientists
Killer Heat in the U.S. Report, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S.D.A. Forest Service