HIDDEN HAZARDS: The Impacts of Climate Change on Incarcerated People in California State Prisons

APPENDIX C. Survey Methodology.

2,233 surveys were sent to incarcerated individuals in California state prisons who were on the Ella Baker Center’s mailing list in mid-January of 2023. EBC routinely holds mail correspondence events with trained volunteers to respond to incarcerated people from all California state prisons. All correspondents requesting legal support, and resource linkages, among other requests for support are automatically added to their mailing list.

Family members of incarcerated people also connect them to EBC by providing their names to be added to the mailing list. EBC does not collect personal information besides mailing addresses; as such, we are unable to determine its representativeness of the incarcerated population in California state prisons.

Our randomization was done by assigning a random number to each person using the RAND function on Excel to select the first 50 in ascending order. We sent an additional 50 surveys, to randomly selected recipients, to some facilities identified by CDCR as most impacted by climate change in their sustainability report. These facilities are: Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) California Institution for Women (CIW) California Medical Facility (CMF) ​California State Prison Solano (SOL) Calipatria State Prison (CAL) An additional 133 surveys were sent using a snowball sampling method. These surveys were sent to facilities where EBC’s Inside Policy Fellows were able to distribute them.

Inside Policy Fellows are currently incarcerated people part of EBC’s Inside/Outside fellowship program. These facilities are: Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) San Quentin State Prison (SQSP) Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) Chuckawalla Valley State Prison (CVSP) California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility (SATF-Corcoran) California Institution for Women (CIW)