From Punitive Governance to Transformative Justice: Rethinking Criminal Justice Reform

Abstract

Punitive governance determines not only liberty but access to cooling, water, energy, and other environmental determinants of health. This ecological secondary-data study with deterministic policy simulation examined 4,078 populated carceral facilities in the contiguous United States. Facility population and mean annual days during 2016-2020 with modeled indoor maximum wet-bulb globe temperature above 28 degrees C were linked to 2019 state prison-and-jail incarceration rates in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Outcomes were population-weighted hazardous-heat days, annual person-days, facility-state exposure disparity, burden concentration, and person-days avoided under alternative population-reduction strategies. Facilities housed 2.03 million people and generated 41.25 million hazardous-heat person-days annually. State incarceration intensity correlated with weighted heat exposure (Spearman rho=0.541, p<0.001). Each additional 100 incarcerated people per 100,000 residents was associated with 3.09 more hazardous-heat days in the unadjusted model (95% CI 2.12-4.06) and 2.52 days after Census-region adjustment (95% CI 0.87-4.18); Census-division adjustment attenuated the estimate to 2.06 days (95% CI -0.14-4.25). Within-state exposure disparity was not associated with incarceration intensity. The highest-incarceration quartile accounted for 58.6% of person-days while housing 33.1% of the facility population. A 10% proportional population reduction avoided 10.0% of person-days, compared with 19.8% under heat prioritization within states and 36.6% under a national upper-bound strategy. Transformative reform should pair enforceable environmental-health protections with population reduction, community reinvestment, and safeguards against transfers and net-widening.