LETCHER COUNTY, KY – In 2025, the Institute to End Mass Incarceration (IEMI) represented the Appalachian Rekindling Project (ARP), an Indigenous- and women-led organization, in purchasing land in eastern Kentucky where the federal government intends to build a new prison, slated to be called FCI-Letcher. The land purchase was also supported by the Building Community Not Prisons coalition, a collection of organizations seeking local alternatives to the new federal prison.
Since taking ownership of the land, ARP has begun to restore it using traditional rematriation practices. The land had previously been damaged by years of strip mining, a process that leaves harmful chemicals in the soil and water.
APR recently discussed how their plan to reintroduce bison to the land, among other Indigenous practices aimed at restoring the ecosystem, would create a ripple effect of ecological restoration. According to ARP, bison are “ecosystem engineers” because they naturally support the environment.
APR’s plans offer an alternative vision for how the land could be used and healed. A prison, by contrast, would only worsen the existing environmental damage.
IEMI is a key partner in the fight against the construction of the new prison as part of our Carceral Infrastructure Project, a national project that aims to prevent new carceral infrastructure and to close facilities that currently exist.