As heat becomes more extreme, inmates are increasingly threatened by rising temperatures

Steve Brooks' cell has no windows or air conditioning, so he relies on two eight-inch fans when it's stifling inside California's oldest prison. There's no access to ice or cold water, and during periodic power outages, there's no electricity.It's kind of like you're hyperventilating. The room's closing in, said Brooks, who's incarcerated in San Quentin Rehabilitation Center and has published articles about extreme heat behind bars.During an eight-hour outage in 2024, the heat rose to between 90 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius and 38 degrees Celsius).

It felt, he said, like he was running out of oxygen.As climate change fuels hotter temperatures, inmates are increasingly vulnerable.Extreme heat can cause symptoms like dizziness, nausea, and headaches. Heat stroke, the most serious heat illness, can kill. When heat combines with humidity, it makes it harder for sweat to evaporate to cool the body.Many prisons and detention centers in the U.S.

are older buildings with antiquated, less efficient or nonexistent cooling systems. Many were built during a prison boom that started in the 1970s and were constructed with heat-trapping materials like concrete and steel. And many prisons are overcrowded.Research shows the number of hot days has increased, and that hotter temperatures are linked to a higher risk of death for inmates, including from suicides.Damon Gilbert, a fellow with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, said heat-related deaths in prisons are underreported and often dont account for how high temperatures make chronic health issues worse.

Its incredibly dangerous, and its only getting more dangerous. And so far we are not keeping up as a country to adapting these facilities.Prisons are getting hotter, increasing risk of deathOne study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that most U.S. prisons had at least 10 days in the summer that were hotter than every previous summer, and several factors exacerbated the risks, including overcrowding and restrictions on movement.

Another study published in the National Library of Medicine found that hotter days mean more deaths from such things as heart disease and suicide including among people who had been incarcerated for less than a year and those who were 65 or older.Julie Skarha, who led the study on prison deaths lin… “It’s kind of like you’re hyperventilating. During an eight-hour outage in 2024, the heat rose to between 90 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius and 38 degrees Celsius).

“It was just really scary.” It felt, he said, like he was running out of oxygen. As climate change fuels hotter temperatures, inmates are increasingly vulnerable. Extreme heat can cause symptoms like dizziness, nausea and headaches.