Environmental conservation and sustainability are not high on the list of US prison goals. Yet in 2004, the Washington State Department of Corrections and Evergreen State College decided they should be. Under the direction of Nalini Nadkarni, a forest ecologist and Evergreen faculty member, a partnership was formed at Cedar Creek Correction Center in western Washington to help the prison reduce its operating costs and environmental impacts and foster prisoners’ engagement with nature. The…

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Read more stories by Tamara Straus.