For inmates, little escape from brutal heat in prisons without air conditioning
As scorching temperatures sweep across the country again this week, one group of Americans is living day-to-day with limited air-conditioning and few options for staying cool: the 2 million men and women in state and federal prisons.These punishing heat waves, which are expected to intensify in frequency and severity because of climate change, pose what prisoner advocates say is a deadly danger to much of the nation’s incarcerated population. Legislation pending in Congress notes that 13 states in the South and Midwest lack universal air-conditioning requirements for their prison facilities, with 22 states lacking even policies on temperature regulation.“This is probably the greatest health and safety issue facing the prison population,” said David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, who has been working on the issue for more than two decades. “When people argue, ‘I didn’t have air conditioning growing up,’ it’s also important to realize that we could leave our homes and go to the mall or a library. Those in prisons are sitting ducks.”Earlier this month, a 42-year-old inmate collapsed amid sweltering conditions in California’s Central Valley. State officials are investigating her death amid allegations by her family and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners that extreme heat was the cause.In Texas, arguments will be heard Tuesday in a federal lawsuit that describes triple-digit highs inside some state prison cells in the summer. Advocates accuse officials of downplaying the number of deaths linked to excessive heat. One case last August involved a 32-year-old man with a history of epilepsy and mental illness, whose core body temperature was 107.5 degrees when he was found unresponsive in his cell.The state has been at the center of legal battles over this issue for the better part of a decade. Lawmakers allocated $85 million last year for the Department of Criminal Justice to install additional air conditioning and, according to the agency, “substantially increase the number of cool beds available.”At the federal level, the proposed Environmental Health in Prisons Act would direct the Bureau of Prisons to publish data on the prevalence of extreme heat and other “stressors” at its facilities. The legislation, introduced by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), would offer $250 million in grants to address excessive temperature, humidity and other problems.Criminal justice experts say such analysis — though only looking at federal prisons — should have been done years ago. There are many states that do not keep indoor temperatures below a certain level, they note, despite the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.“As far as I know, the United States still has the Eighth Amendment; those incarcerated were not sentenced to cruel and unusual punishment or to swelter to death in a confined space,” said Carter White, supervising attorney of the King Hall Civil Rights Clinic at the University of California at Davis law school. “Maybe a common public reaction is, ‘Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,’ but with temps rising, this is akin to torture. The government just needs to fix it.”A study published in spring in Nature Sustainability found that from 2016 to 2020, 118 state prisons, county jails and other detention facilities experienced an average of 75 or more days annually when the indoor temperature felt like 82 degrees or higher. (The study considered wet-bulb globe temperatures, a measure of actual air temperature, humidity, radiant heat and air movement.) Most of these facilities were in Southern California, Arizona, Texas and inland Florida.“Identifying where incarcerated people are exposed to hazardous heat conditions is fundamental to advancing environmental justice for one of the most marginalized and disempowered communities in the United States,” the authors wrote.In prisons without adequate AC or ventilation, conditions are becoming more dangerous for two reasons: longer stretches of high temperatures in many parts of the country, and the aging prison population, with older inmates often taking medications for high blood pressure or other medical problems that can be exacerbated by extreme heat.“This makes for a lethal combination,” Fathi said.Even younger prisoners on antipsychotics or antidepressants can have their core body temperature rise quickly and precipitously, putting them at increased risk.The recent death of Adrienne Boulware has brought renewed attention to the issue. Boulware, 42, was incarcerated at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, where 2,100 women live northwest of Fresno.Mary Xjimenez, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, referred questions about Boulware’s cause of death to the Madera County sheriff-coroner’s office. Officials there did not respond to a request for comment.Xjimenez said heat waves are closely monitored, with the department coordinating with “leadership in each of the state’s 32 prisons to ensure there are appropriate resources and response.” Such measures include providing inmates with ice water from coolers as well as cool water from a water bottle filler. Industrial floor fans are utilized to ventilate the housing units to “proactively cool each wing,” she noted in an email Monday.Elizabeth Nomura, who became a close friend of Boulware’s while she also was behind bars, now works as statewide membership organizer for the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. She provided an account of the events preceding Boulware’s death, which matched details from two other inmates interviewed by The Washington Post. The corrections department provided no comment about their accounts.Boulware fell ill on the Fourth of July. Nomura said she had gone to get her medications, walking across an outside yard to where medications are dispensed and standing in line with other inmates until it was her turn.In part because the institution was operating with less staff given the holiday, the process took more than 27 minutes, according to Nomura. The yard has no shade; the mercury was at 115 degrees.“Adrienne was out there and exposed to pounding heat. The whole time, she only has a few sips of water in a tiny cup to take her meds,” Nomura said multiple women told her.By the time she went inside, Boulware was sweating and shaking, Nomura said. Her cellmates helped her into her cell block, then into the shower there. According to Nomura and the other accounts, Boulware collapsed on the shower floor, the water still running.She was incoherent as the others frantically called for prison personnel, Nomura said. Boulware was taken to a nearby medical facility, the agency spokesperson confirmed, and died two days later.“There’s a sisterhood inside,” one of her cellmates said in a telephone interview Friday, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. She and the other inmate reached said there’s still not enough water being given out.Boulware had been convicted in the 2011 beating death of a panhandler found in the parking lot of an abandoned carwash in Sacramento. She was sentenced in 2015 to 15 years to life. Her family told the Sacramento Bee that they want an independent autopsy done on their mother and grandmother, who they said was due to be released in 2025.The statewide coalition, based in Oakland, is pressing the prison system to install air-conditioning units in all housing areas. The group also wants fans issued to each person at intake — rather than charging an inmate who asks for a fan — and cold water dispensers installed in every housing area.The department is looking into other measures based on the climate of each facility, Xjimenez said in her email. At Ironwood State Prison, which houses about 2,100 inmates three hours east of Los Angeles, a $146.7 million project is underway to improve cooling, she said.Kelly Savage-Rodriguez, another reentry advocate for the coalition, served 23 years in prison, and thinks of the women she tries to assist as “my family.” She worries there will be more deaths.“We used to have some relief at night. But there isn’t any anymore with climate change,” she said. “People can’t rehab their behavior when the temperature is unbearable. This isn’t just complaining. This is like being burned alive in an oven.”
Climate change is exacerbating the danger. But no prisoners are sentenced “to swelter to death in a confined space,” a civil rights attorney says.
As scorching temperatures sweep across the country again this week, one group of Americans is living day-to-day with limited air-conditioning and few options for staying cool: the 2 million men and women in state and federal prisons.
These punishing heat waves, which are expected to intensify in frequency and severity because of climate change, pose what prisoner advocates say is a deadly danger to much of the nation’s incarcerated population. Legislation pending in Congress notes that 13 states in the South and Midwest lack universal air-conditioning requirements for their prison facilities, with 22 states lacking even policies on temperature regulation.
“This is probably the greatest health and safety issue facing the prison population,” said David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, who has been working on the issue for more than two decades. “When people argue, ‘I didn’t have air conditioning growing up,’ it’s also important to realize that we could leave our homes and go to the mall or a library. Those in prisons are sitting ducks.”
Earlier this month, a 42-year-old inmate collapsed amid sweltering conditions in California’s Central Valley. State officials are investigating her death amid allegations by her family and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners that extreme heat was the cause.
In Texas, arguments will be heard Tuesday in a federal lawsuit that describes triple-digit highs inside some state prison cells in the summer. Advocates accuse officials of downplaying the number of deaths linked to excessive heat. One case last August involved a 32-year-old man with a history of epilepsy and mental illness, whose core body temperature was 107.5 degrees when he was found unresponsive in his cell.
The state has been at the center of legal battles over this issue for the better part of a decade. Lawmakers allocated $85 million last year for the Department of Criminal Justice to install additional air conditioning and, according to the agency, “substantially increase the number of cool beds available.”
At the federal level, the proposed Environmental Health in Prisons Act would direct the Bureau of Prisons to publish data on the prevalence of extreme heat and other “stressors” at its facilities. The legislation, introduced by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), would offer $250 million in grants to address excessive temperature, humidity and other problems.
Criminal justice experts say such analysis — though only looking at federal prisons — should have been done years ago. There are many states that do not keep indoor temperatures below a certain level, they note, despite the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
“As far as I know, the United States still has the Eighth Amendment; those incarcerated were not sentenced to cruel and unusual punishment or to swelter to death in a confined space,” said Carter White, supervising attorney of the King Hall Civil Rights Clinic at the University of California at Davis law school. “Maybe a common public reaction is, ‘Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,’ but with temps rising, this is akin to torture. The government just needs to fix it.”
A study published in spring in Nature Sustainability found that from 2016 to 2020, 118 state prisons, county jails and other detention facilities experienced an average of 75 or more days annually when the indoor temperature felt like 82 degrees or higher. (The study considered wet-bulb globe temperatures, a measure of actual air temperature, humidity, radiant heat and air movement.) Most of these facilities were in Southern California, Arizona, Texas and inland Florida.
“Identifying where incarcerated people are exposed to hazardous heat conditions is fundamental to advancing environmental justice for one of the most marginalized and disempowered communities in the United States,” the authors wrote.
In prisons without adequate AC or ventilation, conditions are becoming more dangerous for two reasons: longer stretches of high temperatures in many parts of the country, and the aging prison population, with older inmates often taking medications for high blood pressure or other medical problems that can be exacerbated by extreme heat.
“This makes for a lethal combination,” Fathi said.
Even younger prisoners on antipsychotics or antidepressants can have their core body temperature rise quickly and precipitously, putting them at increased risk.
The recent death of Adrienne Boulware has brought renewed attention to the issue. Boulware, 42, was incarcerated at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, where 2,100 women live northwest of Fresno.
Mary Xjimenez, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, referred questions about Boulware’s cause of death to the Madera County sheriff-coroner’s office. Officials there did not respond to a request for comment.
Xjimenez said heat waves are closely monitored, with the department coordinating with “leadership in each of the state’s 32 prisons to ensure there are appropriate resources and response.” Such measures include providing inmates with ice water from coolers as well as cool water from a water bottle filler. Industrial floor fans are utilized to ventilate the housing units to “proactively cool each wing,” she noted in an email Monday.
Elizabeth Nomura, who became a close friend of Boulware’s while she also was behind bars, now works as statewide membership organizer for the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. She provided an account of the events preceding Boulware’s death, which matched details from two other inmates interviewed by The Washington Post. The corrections department provided no comment about their accounts.
Boulware fell ill on the Fourth of July. Nomura said she had gone to get her medications, walking across an outside yard to where medications are dispensed and standing in line with other inmates until it was her turn.
In part because the institution was operating with less staff given the holiday, the process took more than 27 minutes, according to Nomura. The yard has no shade; the mercury was at 115 degrees.
“Adrienne was out there and exposed to pounding heat. The whole time, she only has a few sips of water in a tiny cup to take her meds,” Nomura said multiple women told her.
By the time she went inside, Boulware was sweating and shaking, Nomura said. Her cellmates helped her into her cell block, then into the shower there. According to Nomura and the other accounts, Boulware collapsed on the shower floor, the water still running.
She was incoherent as the others frantically called for prison personnel, Nomura said. Boulware was taken to a nearby medical facility, the agency spokesperson confirmed, and died two days later.
“There’s a sisterhood inside,” one of her cellmates said in a telephone interview Friday, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. She and the other inmate reached said there’s still not enough water being given out.
Boulware had been convicted in the 2011 beating death of a panhandler found in the parking lot of an abandoned carwash in Sacramento. She was sentenced in 2015 to 15 years to life. Her family told the Sacramento Bee that they want an independent autopsy done on their mother and grandmother, who they said was due to be released in 2025.
The statewide coalition, based in Oakland, is pressing the prison system to install air-conditioning units in all housing areas. The group also wants fans issued to each person at intake — rather than charging an inmate who asks for a fan — and cold water dispensers installed in every housing area.
The department is looking into other measures based on the climate of each facility, Xjimenez said in her email. At Ironwood State Prison, which houses about 2,100 inmates three hours east of Los Angeles, a $146.7 million project is underway to improve cooling, she said.
Kelly Savage-Rodriguez, another reentry advocate for the coalition, served 23 years in prison, and thinks of the women she tries to assist as “my family.” She worries there will be more deaths.
“We used to have some relief at night. But there isn’t any anymore with climate change,” she said. “People can’t rehab their behavior when the temperature is unbearable. This isn’t just complaining. This is like being burned alive in an oven.”