There is growing concern about overheated prisons endangering the health and lives of inmates and guards.
Several lawsuits detail the need for reasonable temperature control; medical experts also urge adequate steps to avoid health problems, National Public Radio reports.
NPR quotes a New York University medical professor, Dr. Susi Vassallo, about her visit to a non-air conditioned prison cell one summer:
“When you closed the … doors, they had just little dots in them, which provided any ventilation from the outside. Even after five minutes … it was absolutely stifling – it was inconceivable to live there 23 hours a day, day after day.”
NPR also cited the case of Jerome Murdough, who was found dead in February in a Rikers Island jail cell where the temperature was at least 100 degrees.
One lawsuit was filed last year in Louisiana. A judge ruled that temperatures cannot exceed 88 degrees inside of the cells, but no action was taken while the state appeals, NPR reported.
Vassallo also said that for most people, those conditions are uncomfortable, but that those with some health conditions can be much more sensitive. That includes high blood pressure and diabetes, or those taking certain medications.
Some corrections officers in Texas have even joined a lawsuit against the state’s department of corrections seeking protection from high temperatures.
Former Texas prison guard Lance Lowry now works with the guards’ union. Lowry told NPR that corrections officers have many of the same heat-sensitive health conditions as prisoners.
“Officers frequently suffer from heat cramps and a lot of heat illnesses,” Lowry said.
Lowry also expressed concern that prisoners and the prison environment as a whole are more difficult to manage when the heat is elevated. There are more altercations and more emergencies in general.
It’s important to accommodate heat-sensitive prisoners, but prison is “not a five-star hotel,” former Texas Warden Keith Price told NPR. He is now a professor of criminology and sociology at West Texas A&M University.
Price added that “there’s a certain amount of things that you give up when you become incarcerated.”
