Extreme heat in Louisiana’s prisons raises risks for incarcerated

During the summer of 2023, people across Louisiana experienced record-breaking heat — and the stress and discomfort that came with it — as heat indexes climbed as high as 120 degrees. In June and July alone, the Louisiana Department of Health reported 16 heat-related deaths across the state. On Aug. 11, 2023, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards declared the state’s first-ever extreme heat emergency.

Many were able to seek shelter from life-threatening temperatures in cooling centers or air conditioned homes. But some of Louisiana’s most vulnerable incarcerated people  were trapped with ‘suffocating’ indoor heat, lack of air conditioning and forced outdoor labor during the hottest recorded year on Earth.

People incarcerated in Louisiana prisons, their families and prisoner’s rights advocates allege that the Louisiana Department of Corrections has failed to properly protect prisoners from extreme heat. The department has requested funding in next year’s state budget to install air conditioning in two prisons — Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel and Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson —  according to an email statement from DOC spokesperson Ken Pastorick to Verite News.

Still, people in prison and those connected to them are anxious as climate experts predict this summer may be even hotter than last.

Deaths from extreme heat and cardiovascular stress are estimated to increase in the United States by as much as 233% by midcentury. And Black adults, who comprise the majority of the state’s incarcerated population, are at the highest risk for fatality, said Sameed Khatana, assistant professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and lead researcher of a study on the increase in cardiovascular heat deaths related to climate change. This is due, in part, to limited access to air conditioning, he said — a condition that inmates in Louisiana’s correctional facilities will be faced with again this summer.

“Everybody’s extremely anxious about going into the summer,” said Lydia Wright, associate director of civil litigation at the Promise of Justice Initiative, an organization that is suing DOC over the working conditions for prisoners at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The lawsuit singles out extreme heat as a major contributor to brutal conditions that lawyers at PJI say amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.  “Last summer was one of the hottest, if not the hottest on the books, and this summer is going to be no better.”

Heat and disability: working the ‘Farm Line’

Temperatures at prisons, jails and immigration detention centers have been climbing steadily over the last 30 years, according to a study published in Nature Sustainability in March. Cascade Tuholske, the lead author on the study, noted that there is an increased risk of prison deaths on hotter days.

The wife of someone imprisoned in Angola told Verite that prisoners have had to cope with escalating temperatures for decades in the state’s prisons. She spoke to Verite on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation against her husband, currently serving a sentence of life without parole for second-degree murder.

“My husband … has been dealing with the heat for 16 years. It gets worse every year,” she said, adding that her husband has a heart condition that makes him particularly vulnerable to the heat. He suffered severe migraines and sleep deprivation from the extreme heat last year, she said.

According to the suit filed by PJI last year, prisoners have suffered dehydration, headaches and muscle pain from heat exposure. Many of them work on Angola’s “Farm Line,” a several-acre operation where inmates grow crops for as little as 2 cents per hour.

The suit alleged that the drinking water given to prisoners on the Farm Line is dirty, “in a moldy cooler that often contains dead insects.” Prisoners are given few breaks and no access to shade during work, according to the suit.

Among the plaintiffs in the 2023 lawsuit is prisoner Myron Smith, who claimed that once, in 2021, he felt dehydrated and experienced muscle seizures during forced manual labor at Angola.

When emergency medical care was called, he was told to drink water and then “forced to sit in the field, in the hot sun, for the rest of the shift,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote.

Prisoners with disabilities face the greatest risks working in the heat in Angola, the plaintiffs’ attorneys claimed in the lawsuit.

“The conditions that they reported are shocking. They shock the conscience … forcing men with serious disabilities to go out in 120 degree [heat index] in the sun, without a hat,” Wright said.

Conditions such as high blood pressure and sickle-cell anemia were also noted in the complaint, making some Louisiana inmates particularly vulnerable to heat stroke, the lawsuit said.

This is not the first time that DOC has been sued for allegedly exposing inmates with disabilities to extreme heat. In 2013, three death-row prisoners alleged that the lack of air conditioning had caused headaches, cramps and exacerbated their medical conditions. A district court judge sided with the prisoners in 2013 and effectively ordered the state to install air conditioning at Angola, but an appellate court overturned that decision in 2015.

While extreme temperatures can be dangerous for anyone, the risk of fatal exposure is particularly high for people with chronic heart conditions and other disabilities.

“When the body is exposed to high temperature levels for an extended period of time, the heart will beat faster and harder to try and transport heat away from the core of the body,” Khatana said.

Black adults are at the greatest risk for cardiovascular heat deaths, partially due to a higher prevalence of medical conditions such as high blood pressure, than other populations, Khatana said.

Of the nearly 30,000 prisoners in Louisiana’s correctional system, 65% are Black, according to the Department of Corrections.

Heat, suicide and and mental health

Extreme heat and strenuous labor conditions also cause psychological stress, Wright said. She likened the labor on the Farm Line to the experiences of enslaved people at Angola when it was a plantation. Black men are forced to do manual labor in the scorching heat, she said, much like their ancestors.

“If that is not cruel and unusual punishment, it stretches the mind to think of another example that would satisfy the test.”

Psychological stress from heat exposure could have perilous effects. According to a recent study conducted by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, there’s a 30% increase in suicide watch incidences in Louisiana correctional facilities that’s associated with extreme heat events.

The study began during other research into the effects of solitary confinement in Louisiana, said lead researcher David Cloud, but extreme heat was the “elephant in the room.” As he walked through narrow cells in state-run facilities he saw men lying  in their boxers on concrete floors. Cloud said the heat in many of the prisons he visited beginning in 2017 was unbearable, and prompted him to look into it further.

“Conditions of confinement are generally harmful to people, but the heat was a factor that was just compounding everything,” Cloud said.

Louisiana seeks to overturn court ruling of ‘abhorrent’ prison health care

Solitary confinement is already highly associated with psychological distress, he said, but the added factor of extreme heat is correlated with an uptick in suicide watch incidences.

In indoor spaces made of concrete and confined rooms with more than one person, there’s nothing you can do to escape the heat, Cloud said.

“The infrastructure of a prison is going to be something like heat hazards in cities where you’re in a neighborhood that doesn’t have a lot of trees or a park and you’re surrounded by buildings,” Cloud said.

Materials such as concrete absorb heat and raise indoor temperatures. Fans provide only limited relief.

Of the eight prisons operated by the Louisiana Department of Corrections, none are fully air-conditioned. The Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel, which closed after it flooded in 2016, was fully air conditioned. The women assigned to LCIW are now held in temporary units at Jetson — all of which are air conditioned, Pastorick said.

What’s been done since last year’s heat emergency?

In a statement to Verite, Pastorick said, in accordance with policy informed by the Louisiana Department of Health, all inmates in Louisiana’s correctional facilities are provided with “cold water, ice, additional cool showers and increased ventilation by opening windows and the use of fans” when temperatures rise above 88 degrees.

He said prison officials and staff use heat alerts to signify when temperatures reach over 88 degrees and distribute water and ice every 30 minutes. At Angola, the staff supplies Gatorade, unlimited ice and water to prisoners and reduce outdoor work hours, he said.

The policy that Pastorick sent to Verite is from 2018. Wright said PJI isn’t aware of any changes in DOC’s extreme heat policy since last summer’s heat emergency.

“We have not seen evidence that the DOC has taken seriously the extraordinary dangers caused by extreme heat at Angola or any other prison in Louisiana. PJI has been litigating these issues for more than a decade,” she said.

While the Department of Corrections is planning to air condition all of its prisons, said Pastorick, they are awaiting an engineer’s report and a study to determine the best way to climate control their facilities.

“Louisiana State Penitentiary has recently added air conditioning to four living facilities,” Pastorick said. “The living facilities without air-conditioning have high-volume fans and cross ventilation to provide cooling. Extra fans have also been placed in some living facilities.”

“Climate controlling all of Louisiana’s state-run prisons is contingent on funding,” said Pastorick.

In the meantime, researchers are hoping to document heat conditions in individual facilties, which have been difficult to get access to, said Tory Lynch, co-author of the Nature study on prisons and extreme heat exposure.

“The conditions in jails and prisons are under-covered as a public health issue, certainly as an environmental justice issue,” Lynch said, noting the disproportionate effect of heat on low income and minority communities.

“We can acknowledge that people can commit crimes or cause harm and suffer consequences from that. But the imprisonment is the consequence, not dying of heatstroke or becoming incredibly ill because of exposure to heat.”

This article first appeared on Verite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.