CLIMATE CHANGE & VULNERABILITY

CDCR has a responsibility to keep people inside safe. Incarcerated people, however, are more often treated as ‘security threats’ rather than a vulnerable population during a climate hazard.

Carlee Purdum, a scholar on the relationship between climate hazards and prisons, writes, “the perception of prisoners as dangerous and innately violent is directly related to the narrative of one of the most common myths of disaster behavior, that disasters cause a breakdown of social order and will be followed not by altruistic behavior, but instead by widespread violence and crime.” Thus, incarcerated people are constructed as a hazard themselves instead of a population uniquely vulnerable to climate hazards, pandemics, and other disasters.

In a 2018 report, the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) provided a definition of vulnerable communities in the context of climate change that implicitly excluded incarcerated people. This definition can be found in the box below. As we will discuss in the next section, incarcerated individuals face unique challenges during climate hazards and therefore must be included in any measure of vulnerability to ensure their safety and well-being.

OPR’s definition of climate vulnerability, 2018.