Mother Nature can’t equalize all: federal prison transparency and environmental exigencies
Divisions and differences abound in the United States. Americans report increased ethno-racial diversity and poor race relations, as the Pew Research Center reported. We also report broad distinctions in annual income, family heritage and other social status markers. Against so many varieties of Americanness, an equalizing theory is popular: Mother Nature metes out justice. She unearths Good Samaritans and kindness in post-disaster communities signaling shared humanity.
Yet, the same circumstances that remind us of heartwarming connections also highlight a link between people physically separated from the public. During environmental exigencies, including hurricanes, an inmate/officer disaster duality recurs.
But what happens? How exactly do the incarcerated and those who oversee them face the elements together? How does the government proactively inform the public about prison conditions during disasters? Will homemade documentaries, like those shot by Scott Whitney, an inmate at Martin Correctional Facility, and recovered by the Miami Herald become the norm?
The public maintains an interest in understanding federal government action. The public should know which guidelines, policies, directives and other (non-exempt) documents the government relies on in carceral decision-making. After all, the issue is inherently in the public interest and the public cares about the treatment of incarcerated people as well as correctional officers. People in prisons do not thereby sever all ties with the outside world.
To capture and communicate connected government action, the Brechner Center is investigating how the federal Bureau of Prisons chose not to evacuate the Miami federal prisons in 2017 when the facilities were slated to bear the brunt of Hurricane Irma. The Center appreciates how federal action with respect to Hurricane Irma sits at the intersection of criminal justice and environmentalism.
And while criminal justice and environmental issues are universal, they are especially critical in Florida. Florida is home to high incarceration rates, massive climate migration and sympathetic voters who amended the state constitution to restore voting rights to 1.4 million people who served their time for certain prior felonies. Moreover, Florida houses about 19,000 people in federal prisons, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
Florida’s social and political milieu may signal Hurricane Irma decision-making as a flashpoint. An estimated 123 people in Florida died in connection with Hurricane Irma. At $50 billion, Hurricane Irma was the fifth costliest hurricane on record. Irma contributed a chunk to the $306.2 billion cumulative cost of weather events in 2017, as reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Of course, Hurricane Irma did not wreck Miami as projected. Yet, the energy she brought — kinetic and potential — is instructive. Surviving a storm does not absolve the government of facilitating public understanding of its disaster-related decision-making.
Hurricane histories serve as important reminders of the devastation that can occur. In 2005, transparency challenges undercut public understanding of prison conditions during Hurricane Katrina. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) determined that no known emergency plan existed when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, which left imperiled scores in prisons and jails.
Through a comprehensive report from the ACLU, the public learned about inmate, correctional officer and attorney accounts of prison conditions then: the report lists several horrific accounts, including that of inmate deaths and unknown whereabouts, inmates waiting in chest-deep water for 12–13 hours to be evacuated after the storm, lost medicine and legal documents, food scarcity and violence. Fact-checking site Snopes determined that “some 517 inmates were unaccounted for” immediately after Hurricane Katrina.
Admittedly, Hurricane Katrina was a worst-case scenario. The ACLU report highlighted state and local officials’ actions. But federal actors gambled in 2017 by not evacuating vulnerable prisons ahead of Hurricane Irma. That gamble should be unpacked publicly.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires federal agencies to make public certain information, including agency statements about the broad “course and method by which [agency] … functions are channeled and determined,” procedural rules and substantive rules. FOIA empowers the public to formally request agency opinions, orders, policies, manuals, copies of records and a general index for copies of records. Requestors do not need special status to seek information.
The U.S. Supreme Court has reasoned that at FOIA’s core, the issue is whether disclosure contributes “significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government.” The Court has also explained that disclosure, and not secrecy, is the act’s predominant purpose.
The Bureau of Prisons describes itself as an agency that “ protect[s] public safety by ensuring that federal offenders serve their sentences of imprisonment in facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure…” Those foci track constitutional standards for incarceration.
In its seminal Farmer v. Brennan decision, the Supreme Court decided that prison officials could be liable under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment for an inmate’s incarceration conditions only if the officials both (i) knew of and (ii) disregarded an excessive risk to an inmate’s health and safety. The Court reasoned that prison officials violate the 8th Amendment when: (i) the deprivation alleged is sufficiently serious, based on an objective standard; and (ii) the prison official had a sufficiently culpable state of mind, demonstrative of deliberate indifference to inmate health and safety.
If the federal government acts transparently during disaster decision-making, then space to improve prison conditions for both inmates and correctional officers should open. A clearer understanding of what occurs in prisons and how the feds govern these facilities could result in improvements for inmates and correctional officers, especially in times of environmental emergency.
The recent Miami Herald report showed how Whitney, the inmate who filmed the correctional facility, videotaped the warehousing of inmates during Hurricane Irma, moldy facilities, fights and drug overdoses.
An April 2018 Miami New Times report documented prison guards’ statements that the Bureau of Prisons “put their lives in danger for no reason” as they were “forced them to ride out … [Hurricane Irma]… in solitary confinement cells, which were covered in mold, urine, and feces.”
Per the Miami New Times: “When the rains and wind kicked up, the rooms began to leak and the floors flooded. The power went out overnight.” The guards told the publication that they were not fed for 24 hours after facility arrival. If the guards’ accounts were accurate, one can imagine the inmates’ circumstances.
Public calls for climate emergency and criminal justice reform fit with public needs for carceral decision-maker transparency. These decision-makers should ensure staff training, proper planning and the timely performance of evacuations during environmental exigencies.
After all, when storms descend on these facilities, those who remain tend to ride it out in tandem.
Imani Jackson is the Law, Environment & Society Legal Fellow at the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, where her research focuses on the impact of government secrecy on nonwhite communities.
