But these court cases have not had a national impact on air conditioning in prisons. And that’s exactly what we’re doing when we leave prisoners locked in cells when the heat and humidity climb beyond a certain level.”Ĭourts in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Mississippi have ruled that incarceration in extremely hot or cold temperatures violates the Eighth Amendment. In August 2018, 19 prison staff and incarcerated people had to be treated for heat-related illnesses.) As David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, explained to The Intercept, “Everyone understands that if you leave a child in a car on a hot day, there’s a serious risk this child could be injured or die. (It’s just not incarcerated people who get sick from the heat in the state’s prisons. In 2011, an exceptionally hot summer in Texas, 10 incarcerated people died from heat-related illnesses during a month-long heat wave. The lack of air conditioning in prisons has already had fatal consequences. For example, despite the fact that incarcerated people in Texas are not paid for their labor, purchasing a fan from the Texas prison commissary costs an unaffordable $20. For prisoners, those options are generally unavailable.” Even fans can even be inaccessible. As Prison Legal News explains in a 2018 article on prison air conditioning litigation, “people outside of prison who experience extreme heat have options that prisoners often lack – they can take a cool shower, drink cold water, move into the shade or go to a place that is air conditioned. Moreover, people in prison do not have the same cooling options that people on the outside do. Because of this, the temperatures inside prisons can often exceed outdoor temperatures. Prisons are mostly built from heat-retaining materials which can increase internal prison temperatures. The structure of prisons and prison life can also make incarcerated people more vulnerable to heat. 19% are taking medication for high blood pressure.21% are prescribed psychotropic medications.In Texas, a state that has air conditioning in all inmate housing areas in only 30 of its 109 prisons, a high percentage of incarcerated people are particularly vulnerable to heat: Old age also increases risk of heat-related illness, and respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, such as asthma, are exacerbated by heat. Conditions such as diabetes and obesity can limit people’s ability to regulate their body heat, as can high blood pressure medications and most psychotropic medications (including Zoloft, Lexapro, Prozac, Cymbalta, and more but excluding the benzodiazepines). Many people in prison are especially susceptible to heat-related illness, as they have certain health conditions or medications that make them especially vulnerable to the heat. It can also affect people’s kidneys, liver, heart, brain, and lungs, which can lead to renal failure, heart attack, and stroke. Prolonged exposure to extreme heat can cause dehydration and heat stroke, both of which can be fatal.

The lack of air conditioning in Southern prisons creates unsafe-even lethal-conditions. While there are no national statistics on air conditioning in prison, we found that at least 13 states in the hottest regions of the country lack universal air conditioning in their prisons:įor more information on these states, see the appendix. 13 famously hot states lack universal A/C in their prisons

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