The sweltering heat on my first day in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a little more than an hour north of New York City, was unlike anything I had experienced in my life. 

My cell sat on the fourth deck of a five-tier block. The heat rose from below. I stripped down to my state-issued boxers and lay on my bunk, praying for relief. Sweat beaded on my skin. No matter how many times I wiped it off, it returned again moments later. 

Being inside a cell during the hottest months of the year is like being cooked in an oven. Cells even resemble ovens in their architecture: smooth metal cubes with only a single door in and out. In most prisons I’ve been in, the cells lack a window. The brick-and-mortar construction of many of the older prisons captures heat all day long and then continues to radiate it throughout the cellblocks at night. 

I hadn’t yet been able to acquire the small fan that we were allowed to purchase from the commissary. The heat was so intense that the roaches living in my footlocker even crawled out during the daylight hours to escape the humidity.

It was 2002. How was I going to survive this environment for the next 20-plus years? How am I going to survive the next few months? This year, New York is once again expected to be in for an abnormally hot summer.

200-year-old prisons

The absence of air conditioning in 2024 is surprising, considering that New York is still incarcerating tens of thousands of people in aging prisons while our world experiences rapidly changing temperatures. Last year was the hottest year on record, and I’m sure we’ll burn down that new benchmark in the coming years with even hotter temperatures.

It is also surprising because of what we know about the relationship between extreme heat and mortality. In 2023, a group of researchers, led by the Brown University epidemiologist Julianne Skarha, found that deaths stemming from excessive heat exposure increased 21% between 2001 and 2019 in prisons located in the Northeast.

About 90% of U.S. homes have air conditioning, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But it’s uncommon for prisons to feature modern cooling systems in their living areas.

Past court rulings don’t require prisons to provide air conditioning throughout living areas. Instead, prisons often rely on cheaper cooling methods, such as using fans, providing ice or cold water, or allowing extra showers. These other cooling options have kept prisons from violating the Eighth Amendment — which covers cruel and unusual punishment — because prison systems are not being “deliberately indifferent,” or doing nothing, to help alleviate inmates’ suffering from extreme heat.

Much of the focus has tended to be on Southern and Midwestern prisons, where 13 states don’t provide air conditioning in living areas. But while the South might need greater cooling than the Northeast, it can still get blazing hot in my home state of New York.

Nearly all living areas in New York prisons are not air-conditioned, according to a statement from the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS, which oversees the state’s prison system. The lone exception is Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a women’s prison in Westchester County, which has air conditioning in its housing unit, dayroom and nursery. In all other state prisons, air conditioning is provided in medical areas.

Living units in state prisons “are properly ventilated in accordance with national standards set by the American Correctional Association,” according to DOCCS. And incarcerated New Yorkers can purchase fans for around $15 in prison commissaries. 

When a state prison falls under a heat warning or advisory, according to DOCCS, the department issues memos with recommendations for how people can stay cool to avoid heat-related illnesses. Those memos include instructions for staff and incarcerated people to stay hydrated and for staff to be aware of signs and symptoms of heat illness. They also call for the consideration of reducing outside work, and for staff to pay particular attention to vulnerable populations. 

“All incarcerated individuals are monitored for any signs or symptoms of heat-related illnesses and medical attention is provided as necessary,” according to a DOCCS statement.

When you consider the age of New York prisons, the lack of cooling makes sense, in a way. The state has four maximum security prisons that were built in the 1800s: Auburn Correctional Facility (1818), Sing Sing Correctional Facility (1826), Clinton Correctional Facility (1845), and Elmira Correctional Facility (1876). Plenty more New York prisons were built in the early- to mid-1900s. My prison, Fishkill Correctional Facility, was built in 1896, first constructed as Matteawan State Hospital for people deemed “criminally insane.”

The state has reconfigured and renovated these prisons countless times. But they have refused to make the living conditions more humane. The summer has a punishing effect on us, and I mean that literally. 

No fans and no ice

In 2012, 10 years after I arrived at prison, I was sent to solitary confinement, or “the box,” for 60 days for arguing with a guard.

There was a late-summer heat wave with temperatures topping 90 degrees. It felt even hotter in the stifling prison environment. The concrete cell was located on the top floor of a three-story building and did not have any windows that opened. I was restricted to this cell for 23 hours a day. The air was stagnant. There was no ventilation. 

The cell seemed empty because I didn’t even have my limited personal property that us incarcerated folks are usually allowed to possess. In solitary, I realized I owned nothing but my body — and even that could be dispossessed through punishment. 

I lost 15 pounds from the constant sweating and limited diet. The only way to wash my clothes was in a tiny sink. I dried my clothes by hanging them on my bed frame. The lack of natural light and ventilation combined with high humidity made our cellblock smell musty.

I was permitted no property other than what the state issued — no fans, no shorts, no extra water, and no ice. The only water to drink was from the sink; it had a metallic tang. 

The heat sat like a burning ember on my chest. It became even worse when the incarcerated man in the cell next to me, who suffered from mental illness, began to urinate all over the floor of his cell. 

The unknown cost

Around 2015, the exercise yard was covered with blacktop for “security reasons” — to keep people from burying contraband in the ground. It was close to 90 degrees, and the summer sun beat down upon that unforgiving surface, which then radiated the heat back up in an infernal haze. 

I watched a young, fit man drop to the ground from a pull-up bar. He lay still on the pavement — limp, lifeless, with his arms splayed above his head. Corrections officers sprinkled water on his face while they waited for medical attention. It seemed obvious to everyone watching that he collapsed because of the extreme heat. It took over 30 minutes for the medical staff to get him to a clinic. He never regained consciousness while I watched the situation from across the yard. Later, rumors flew through the prison that he had died, but there was no way for me to know for sure, or what specifically would have caused his death.

Right now, too many public officials are afraid of making prisons more comfortable, for fear that doing so would pamper those of us inside. And until that mentality changes, incarcerated folks will continue to live in inhumane conditions and die from easily preventable causes like heatstroke. 

A DOCCS spokesperson told the Prison Journalism Project and Hell Gate that there have been no heat-related deaths in state prisons in recent years. But as advocates in Texas and other Southern states know, proving that a death is heat-related is challenging. Texas officials say their state prisons haven’t had a heat-related death in 12 years even as a Texas Tribune analysis found that 41 incarcerated Texans died “in stifling, uncooled prisons of either heart-related or unknown causes” during Texas’ record-breaking heat wave last summer.

The congregate living arrangements (packed cellblocks, double-bunked cells, open-air dormitories, small rooms with multiple persons) are also hotbeds for sickness, as the recent COVID-19 pandemic proved. I was ill with COVID multiple times during the pandemic before vaccines were available, and two men in my housing unit at the time died. Such illnesses will likely multiply in a hotter world.

The solution is simple, if costly. We need air conditioning in our prisons.