Last year was the planet’s hottest ever, and this year has a shot at being even hotter. In prison, spiking temperatures can be fatal. Deaths in prisons climb 5.2% with every 10 degrees the summer’s thermometer rises above average, according to a 2023 Prison Policy Initiative report. Suicides go up 4.8%. Fatal heart complications rise 6.7%.
“It ain’t like I can go buy a bag of ice,” said Jimmy, a 78-year-old who’s serving a life sentence. “I can remember snow as deep as your ankles as far south as Alabama. You ain’t going to see that ever again, no siree.”
Like most elderly people in prison, Jimmy faces a host of health issues that the heat exacerbates.
“It’s like an oven most days. No shade, no air, no ice. Lukewarm water,” he said about his housing unit. “I tell my daughter that I’ve done my time in hell, so I know I’ll go to heaven.”
Hollywood has made much of sweltering prisons, with “Cool Hand Luke” once named to a list of history’s sweatiest movies. The pain is real: While 9 in 10 households in the South blast air-conditioning as temperatures break new records, 13 hot states lack universal air conditioning in their prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative. Some prison commissaries offer electric fans, but the costs can be out of reach. In South Carolina, at my prison, they go for $23. The price goes up to $32 in Georgia, according to data obtained by The Appeal.
Less expensive ways to cool off — a towel, cold water or ice — can be pricey in states where incarcerated workers earn little or nothing for their labor, including South Carolina.
Back when I was incarcerated in North Carolina, a nurse at Nash Correctional Institution told me the heat hits the elderly hard.
“I always dread the summer for these guys,” she said. “It gets really hot and with no air, all the elderly have it tough. I can only do so much.”
The ranks of people in prison who are 55-and-older has grown from 48,000 to 154,000 over the last two decades, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report.
Climate change means more than just heat. Severe droughts have forced water restrictions in many areas. In California, inmates lacked access to showers during hot spells, according to a survey by the nonprofit Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
Penal systems are often ill-equipped to handle climate disasters. When a hurricane swept into North Carolina in 2022, inmates in its path sat in knee-deep water, as I wrote early last year. Evacuation took hours.
“We are usually an afterthought,” said one inmate, Chris.
When I was incarcerated at Brown Creek Correctional Institution, a flood-prone prison atop a former landfill in eastern North Carolina, officials addressed a thriving mosquito population by selling fly swatters and repellent. Inmates who couldn’t afford them were out of luck.
