Prisoners should be treated humanely, but as the temperature warms there is an excessive heat warning, and many American systems fall short.
Excessive Heat Warning! All Fired Up Inmates Being Confined in the Heat (Photo: South Coast Register)
Excessive Heat Warning! All Fired Up
In Louisiana, the goal of the juvenile justice system is rehabilitation rather than punishment for excessive heat warning.
However, a number of young people from Louisiana were moved to the empty former death row of the infamous adult maximum security state prison known as Angola almost a year ago. Since then, they have endured a summer of record-breaking heat without access to air conditioning, claim the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against excessive heat warning the state. Temperatures inside the windowless cells reached intolerable levels as the outside temperatures reached triple digits for days.
This is neither punishment nor rehabilitation. It is cruel because of the excessive heat warning. Although adults are in prison for both punishment and rehabilitation, neither adults nor teenagers should have to put up with such conditions.
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Excessive Heat Warning! Inmates Confined in the Heat
However, the extreme heat has had such an impact on Louisiana’s adult prisoners that authorities have forced them to increase suicide watch hours. In Parchman, Mississippi, at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a U.S. According to a Department of Justice probe, indoor temperatures last year reached 145 degrees and marked as an excessive heat warning. In Texas, where 70% of prison housing units apparently lack air conditioning, incarceration turns into execution when summer temperatures rise due to climate change.
According to one study, there are typically 14 heat-related deaths per year that result in excessive heat warning in Texas jails without air conditioning but none in the comparatively small number of institutions that do. This summer, the state has experienced an average of two prison deaths per day, many of which have been linked to the heat despite official denials to the contrary.
Since a long time ago, Southern states have suffered from inadequate cooling during the hot summers, but due to climate change, Northern states like Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Indiana are now experiencing the same issue. The brutal heat is particularly deadly for elderly prisoners. It exacerbates already challenging mental health problems due to irritable excessive heat warning, which are common in prisons. It changes the effects of various drugs. It keeps people from sleeping. Temper tantrums and violent conduct rise as a result.
