The Impossibility of Habitability: The Carceral State as Ecological Catastrophe

ABSTRACT Ecological catastrophes refer to conditions that produce a state of perpetual uninhabitability or the impossibility of habitability (Hassanain, 2025), namely for marginalized communities. This paper argues that in the United States, the carceral state, an interconnected system of surveillance and criminalization across formal and informal social institutions, propagates ecological catastrophe. The punitive ideologies that substantiate the carceral state lend legitimacy to systems of control that disproportionately confine certain bodies and communities to unceasing precariousness. Examining four dimensions of ecological catastrophes in the carceral state: the built environment of carceral facilities; second, the conditions of confinement within them; third, the demographics of those incarcerated within those facilities; and last, the precarity of existence upon release, problematizes notions of livability for those impacted by incarceration and generates new possibilities for defining alternative spaces of habitation.