Ecologies of Justice Making and Unmaking Prison Worlds Through Social Environmental Interventions

What is the role of multi-species ecologies in creating spaces that counteract the violence in carceral systems and environmental destruction? This book brings together, for the first time, contributions on issues related to prison, jail, and reentry programs, community-based interventions, environmental justice, and sustainability. Through rigorous analysis, detailed case studies, poetry, and personal reflections, the book offers ways of thinking and acting at the intersection of environmental issues and the carceral system. It gathers hard-earned wisdom and insight of researchers, activists, practitioners, and community leaders from within and beyond prison walls who have taken up their projects despite profound institutional constraints.

Approaches in the book range from reform to abolition, as authors detail both practical interventions and imaginative courses of action. More than a contribution to academic knowledge, the book also uniquely highlights voices of those who are incarcerated, survivors of crime, and institutional stakeholders. In addition to writing about the carceral system based on research and personal experience, authors describe practices that are creating transformative spaces of environmental education, building effective pipelines for green workforce development, and sustaining reciprocal relationships for eco-social healing.

Matthew Delsesto is a sociologist, author, and educator with over fifteen years of experience in prison education. He has led collaborative research projects, developed community engaged learning initiatives at universities, consulted with nonprofit organizations on outreach, strategy, and program evaluation, taught experiential learning courses on college campuses and in community-based settings, and worked to strengthen public engagement with city government. His research and practice have been funded by the National Science Foundation, Hearst Foundations, and the Center for Human Rights and International Justice. He is the author of Design and the Social Imagination (2022) and over a dozen publications in academic journals and other outlets.

Daniela Jauk-Ajamie is an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice studies at the University of Akron, Ohio. She is a certified clinical sociologist and serves on the board of the American Association of Applied and Clinical Sociology (AACS). She co-authored the book Gardening Behind Bars: Clinical Sociology and Food Justice in Incarcerated Settings (2024).

Elizabeth Lara currently works as a garden educator, Dodger Stadium tour guide (with a specialization on the botanic garden tour), a facilitator for a domestic violence intervention program, and a freelance gardener. Her academic research focuses on gardens and horticultural history in current and former sites of incarceration in California. Her work "Prison Gardens and Growing Abolition" has been published in the edited collection The Promise of Multispecies Justice (2022).

Shea Zwerver works to bring nature to carceral settings, increase access to nature to promote prosocial behavior, and improve quality of life through equity-driven practices. From 2016 to 2022, she served in multiple roles with Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. There, she conceptualized and coordinated a vocational and educational training program–the "Correctional Conservation Collaboration" at state prisons in arboriculture, forestry, and natural resource conservation.