Eco-Roundup: Why air conditioning failed to fix deadly heat in prisons this summer
Every month, I assemble a round-up of stories I’m following and issues I’m covering, with palate cleansers at the end.
I’ve been following the severe impact of summer heat on the health of people in prisons for the past four years, and this summer I’m seeing more reporting on the topic than ever. From Louisiana to Washington to Kentucky, and internationally from the Philippines to Malta, the media is finally paying attention, including by documenting the prison heat deaths that go uncounted every summer.
They're also reporting on how often air conditioning breaks down in prisons. This raises questions about whether AC can actually solve the climate crisis in prisons, or whether, as journalists Christopher Blackwell and Sarah Sax recently argued, decarceration is the best way.
Here’s a roundup of what folks wrote about this summer.
In Texas and Georgia, lawsuits for heat deaths
The state of Texas’s own doctors believed that heat was a contributing factor in the deaths last year of 32-year-old John Castillo, 37-year-old Elizabeth Hagerty, and 50-year-old Patrick Womack inside un-air conditioned prisons in the midst of a hot Texas summer. Lauren McGaughy, a Texas reporter who’s been putting out investigative work on prison heat for years, obtained their autopsies and asked for comment from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Despite the fact that Castillo and Womack both had core temperatures over 106 degrees at the time of their deaths, the agency denied to McGaughy that these were heat deaths. All three prisoners are named in an important lawsuit making its way through a federal court in Austin, Texas, alleging that the lack of air conditioning in Texas prisons amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
In Georgia, another lawsuit is working its way through the court system. Juan Carlos Ramirez Bibiano, age 27, died after being left in an outdoor cell at Telfair State Prison for five hours without water or shade last July, as the temperature reached 96 degrees, according to the complaint.
On the other side of the country, the New Mexico Prison & Jail Project filed suit on behalf of Lawrence Lamb, who suffered dehydration and feared for his life when he was transported in an un-airconditioned van for several hours in 2019, when he was 61 years old. This move was especially wild given that New Mexico had already lost a suit in 2012 brought by Isaha Casias, another prisoner who was left in an unairconditioned prison van.
And internationally, the Philippines Supreme Court ordered judges to analyze the impact of heat on people in the nation’s overcrowded prisons.
Continued deadly heat this summer
This summer has been no less perilous for people locked in hot prisons. Adrienne Boulware, a 47-year-old incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility, died of heat stroke on July 6. An advocate with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners told Nation reporter Victoria Law that women incarcerated during the heat wave were saying, “We can’t breathe, we’re sick, we’re throwing up.”
Robert John, who is incarcerated outside of Chicago, wrote in Truthout about how his neighbor two cells down died in the midst of a heat wave in June. Michael Broadway, who was 51 and had asthma, had a medical permit to be placed in a lower-level unit, where it was less hot. Instead he was placed in an area known for being particularly hot. John heard him call out that he couldn’t breathe, before he collapsed and later died.
Prisoners and corrections officers left out of heat protections at work
A judge denied an emergency motion from prisoners at Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison, asking for a halt to forced agricultural labor when the heat index hits 88 degrees. However, he did order the corrections department to make changes to its heat policies, asserting that they fall short of state and federal agricultural worker heat safety rules, leaving conditions that “create a substantial risk of injury or death.”
The Louisiana motion was a part of a larger lawsuit alleging that Angola’s Farm Line amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Louisiana plans to appeal and has framed the forced labor, which often pays nothing or 2 cents per hour, as an initiative that provides prisoners with fresh vegetables. The heat index in the fields that make up Angola can reach 156 degrees in August, according to a report by the Appeal.
Worker safety rules often fail to be applied to people in prisons. For example, California recently established new heat standards meant to protect workers as soon as temperatures hit 82 degrees. However the rules only passed after the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health agreed to exclude correctional workers (and, by default, prisoners), which was purported to be too expensive.
Air conditioning is being installed in some places, but progress is slow
The Arizona Department of Corrections has acknowledged that nine people have been treated for heat-related illnesses, though it’s likely that’s an undercount. The state will spend the next several years installing air conditioning in the prisons. Reporters with ABC 15 published a 35-minute interview with prisons director Ryan Thornell.
Mississippi has committed to install air conditioning in some of its prisons but has declined to share a timeline. The issue is urgent: In one 72-hour period in early July the outdoor heat index at Parchman prison, where at least one unit lacks air conditioning, reached 185 degrees on four separate occasions, according to the Vicksburg Daily News. In North Carolina, 7,020 beds lack air conditioning, and the corrections department said it will be 2026 before all housing units are cooled.
Across the U.S., prison air conditioning systems are breaking down
Installing air conditioning or swamp coolers isn’t a sure solution. In multiple places cooling systems failed during heat waves this summer, including at at least three correctional facilities in Nevada, according to the Nevada Current. Air conditioning at the privately run Eastern Mississippi Correctional Facility was out of order between May and July, and, at Parchman, intermittent power failures in early August, when temperatures were consistently above 100, left prisoners without even fans. Air conditioning also failed at Baltimore’s Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center during a week in July where the heat index reached 110. The same facility has suffered water outages this summer, according to the Baltimore Banner. The California State Prison, Solano, had to resort to emergency generator power, leaving many prisoners without running water, ice, or ventilation with outdoor temperatures in the 90s, reported the Vacaville Reporter.
New research says prisons tend to be hotter than the wider world
Meanwhile, a new study published in Nature Sustainability found prisons experience on average 5.5 more hot days than other locations. At over 1700 prisons — over half of which were in Texas or Florida — the number of hot days annually has increased since 1982, and over half of them were in Texas or Florida.
That’s not to say heat is just an issue in the south. In Pennsylvania more than a third of facilities are without AC. In Connecticut most facilities have air conditioning in housing units — but not the Osborn Correctional Institution, which holds over 1100 people.
“Nearly all living areas in New York prisons are not air-conditioned,” according to a dispatch for Hell Gate from Jared Bozydaj, who spent years incarcerated. He lost 15 pounds while being locked in solitary confinement during a heat wave in 2012. He describes watching a young, fit man go unconscious because of the heat. Rumor spread that he later died.
When hurricanes hit prisons, power outages mean heat can follow
Heat is not the only climate change related problem hitting prisons. Michelle Pitcher at the Texas Observer documented the impact of Hurricane Beryl on prisoners. Multiple interviewees described power outages that left them without air conditioning or ventilation. The heat and anxiety kept them sleepless.
In case you missed it:
As part of the project Akil Harris and I did a couple years ago mapping the impact of heat, floods, and wildfires on prisons, I spoke extensively with Angel Argueta Anariba about his experience of hurricanes inside immigration detention. I think it’s important to clock that the hurricane-related issues were not the biggest ones Angel faced. He shared more of his story than I could in this new video that’s part of a campaign to close ICE facilities. The campaign also put out a detailed report about human rights abuses against immigrant detainees in Louisiana. It includes some disturbing details about the environmental conditions inside the facilities and shows how these fit into a much broader range of abuses. Angel is a part of this campaign largely because he’s demanded that there be accountability for what happened to him, and I’m really happy to see him finding ways to make his voice heard.
Other stories I’m following:
“Her lawyers and paralegals fear that she may have been abducted by the military.”
A 25-year-old Filipino environmental advocate has gone missing. Rowena Dasig was arrested in July 2023 while researching a liquified natural gas plant. She was poised to be acquitted of a charge of illegal possession of firearms this month and should have been released. However, although jail officials claim she was freed on August 22, neither her family nor her legal team has seen or heard from her. Abductions and even assassinations of environmental activists are common in the Philippines, where the government tends to label anyone expressing opposition as a terroristic communist insurgent. Dasig had been falsely tagged as a leader of the armed group the New People’s Army, and according to Rappler, members of her legal team have also faced spurious charges of terror financing and providing material support to terrorists that were later thrown out. Such labels create serious danger for environmental activists like Dasig.
“I received a call from an unknown number saying how they would find me.”
Tens of thousands of Serbians protested against lithium mining this month, after a Serbian court restarted a controversial mine. Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić has promoted the mine as a solution to the European Union’s electrification needs. With resistance mounting, he’s now claiming that the protests amount to a plot to overthrow him and has warned of a potential coup. Numerous lithium opponents have been arrested or interrogated under a law that prohibits “calls for violent change of the constitutional order,” according to Balkan Insight. The charge comes with penalties of up to five years in prison and has been used in the past to suppress protest movements. Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic was forced to promise to revise a travel watch list after pop star Severina Vuckovic was detained and interrogated about her support for the anti-mining movement. Supporters of the movement have also faced arrests and a range of other pressure tactics. For example, activist Nikola Ristic told Al Jazeera that a tax inspector was sent to his company, and an emergency response team in full combat gear visited his parents’ apartment.
Protests erupted throughout Uganda this month against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. Twenty-one people were arrested in the capital city of Kampala, while in Hoima City a planned demonstration was blocked by soldiers with the Uganda Peoples' Defence Forces (UPDF). Jessica Corbett at Common Dreams pointed out that the UPDF has received extensive U.S. funding. In many ways it’s unsurprising that U.S. military funding would be used to quell environmental protest in a place like Uganda. I’m reminded of Stuart Schrader’s book Badges Without Borders, which traces how the U.S. has sponsored police trainings around the world. Alessandra Bergamin also had an article this summer — an investigation I'll turn to again and again I think — about the U.S. funding behind attacks against land defenders internationally.
Reporter Nina Lakhani put out two essential pieces in the Guardian this month laying out the environmental stakes of Israel’s war on Gaza. In one piece, she and Ajit Niranjan describes new research by Oil Change International showing that three tankers of jet fuel from the U.S. were shipped to Israel since the International Court of Justice ruled in January that Israel should move to assure acts of genocide are not committed in Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories laid out the stakes. “In the case of the US jet-fuel shipments, there are serious grounds to believe that there is a breach of the genocide convention for failure to prevent and disavowal of the ICJ January ruling and provisional measures,” she stated.
In a second piece, Lakhani dives into new research by the Pacific Institute that shows a huge rise in water-related conflicts in 2023, driven by Israeli attacks on Palestinian water supplies in Gaza and the West Bank. “Israeli settlers and/or armed forces contaminated and destroyed water wells, pumps and irrigation systems on 90 occasions during 2023 – the equivalent of more than seven water-related acts of violence every month,” Lakhani reported. Water supply attacks related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were down in 2023, though the new research points to multiple high-profile examples, such as the Russian military destroying a dam on the Mokri Yaly River last summer.
Palate Cleansers
I cover topics that are heavy and distressing to take in, so I'm ending these posts with things that make me feel grounded: food, nature, community.
Something Delicious: crunchy black sesame butter
After I was gifted this crunchy black sesame butter from Rooted Fare, a friend and I found ourselves smearing it on bread in the middle of the night and pledging that our homes would never be without it again. Turns out it is not peanut butter priced so will have to remain a special occasion luxury in this house. But I do think about it a lot.
Garden Update: bees, bees bees
I’ve been harvesting jalapeños and tomatoes this month, as well as Thai and Genoa basil. The cherry bomb peppers are about ready and the raspberry bush I thought was barren has little green fruits emerging. But my favorite thing about my container garden right now is all the bees. There’s almost always at least one bumbling around out there, which feels magical on such a concrete corner.
Community Bulletin Board: The Nosh Returns
Eco Files was inspired at least a little bit by a very different newsletter some dear friends were developing at the same time as mine. This week The Nosh relaunches, and you should subscribe. It could be called an antidote to the heavy material I offer up. I have tried Jessie’s gnocchi, and it is great. And after thinking about prisons and the climate crisis all day, I fully intend to accept one of Alexis’s TV recommendations.
Member discussion