Hazardous heat exposure among the incarcerated. Is your client at risk? Compassionate Release through the Second Look Act May Help.

Between 2016 and 2020, carceral facilities in the United States experienced an average of 41.3 million person-days of heat exposure annually. State prisons contributed 61% (24.5 million person-days) of the total exposure, followed by county jails at 27% (11.1 million person-days).

In 2018, an estimated 145,240 individuals in Texas and 98,941 in Florida, accounting for 12% of all incarcerated individuals in the United States, were responsible for 52% of the total heat exposure. Nature Sustainability

‘Cooking someone to death’: Southern states resist calls to add air conditioning to prisons

Advocates have called the sweltering conditions in some prisons “cruel and unusual” punishment. As of 2024, roughly three-quarters of Florida prisons lack AC, and over two-thirds of Texas prison beds don’t have air conditioning throughout the facilities. Many prisons in Georgia and Alabama also lack complete air conditioning.

1/4/2024, JESSE M. FURMAN , United States District Judge.

There is a limited safety valve based on the general mandatory detention rule. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3145(c) , a defendant subject to detention pursuant to Section 3143(a)(2) “may be ordered released, under appropriate conditions,” if two requirements are met.

• ...many district courts “have found that conditions in prisons, in combination with the personal circumstances of individual defendants, can constitute exceptional circumstances.”
• An increasingly volatile environment intensifies the deterioration of infrastructure and harmful policies around charging fees for medical care, privatizing care and commissary items, and failed emergency protocols .

Under 18 U.S.C. § 3145(c), a district court has the authority to order the release of someone otherwise subject to mandatory detention pursuant to Section 3143(a)(2) if, among other things,

• First, convincing evidence that the person is not likely to flee or pose a danger to community safety... 18 U.S.C. § 3143(a)(1) ; see id. §3145(c) .
• Second, it must be “clearly shown that there are exceptional reasons why such a person’s detention would not be appropriate.” Id. § 3145(c).
• ...the best the courts can do is not add unnecessarily to the inmate population and thereby avoid exacerbating the already frightening staff-to-inmate ratio.

“...it is clearly shown that there are exceptional reasons why such a person’s detention would not be appropriate.”

• The prison population is also aging, with one in seven serving life in prison 19 , potentially resulting in greater overall heat vulnerability to those incarcerated.

• In August 2015, temperatures that month reached 105° Fahrenheit during the day. Even after sunset, the concrete segregation cells at the Dr. Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville never quite cooled to a comfortable level.

In Oregon, where a heat wave brought 100-plus degree days in 2021, one prison offered special “cooling” towels for $18 — a nearly 100% markup .

• In Utah, where a new prison recently opened near the wetlands of the Great Salt Lake, mosquito populations are thriving. However, the problem has gotten so bad (due to growing populations of mosquitoes and ticks) that prison officials have been scrambling for solutions.
• Three years after COVID-19 reporting, infectious diseases disproportionately impact those in prisons, where modern medicine and public health directives go ignored .
• The relationship between heat and violence .

There is a Future Solution

A Harvard Healthy Building has developed a safer building program that reduces Budgets over the long run by refitting HVAC systems (and new filters) to protect all from COVID and other viral contagions.

• It said roofing and HVAC systems were among the top areas of need regarding estimated costs.
• The US spends roughly 90% of its life indoors, according to Harvard researchers Joseph Allen and John Macomber, authors of Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Can Make You Sick - or Keep You Well. Then, as a bonus, a decreased annual budget.

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Marc, Dr. Blatstein

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