Some Iowa prisoners don’t have luxury of air conditioning in extreme heat

Trish Mehaffey, CR Gazette –

Most people can get relief from the searing temperatures this week, but some of Iowa’s 8,332 prison inmates don’t have that choice because four out of nine of the prison’s housing units don’t have air conditioning.

Lettie Prell, Iowa Department of Corrections spokesperson, said the prisons have procedures in place to ensure the summer conditions don’t negatively impact or harm the inmates and correctional officers. The officers and staff have first-aid training for any heat-related problems, fans are set up in the non air-conditioned areas and the inmates have “extra access, more than normal,” to water and they are given frequent breaks while on work assignments.

The housing units without cooling systems are in the Anamosa State Penitentiary, Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Michellville, Clarinda Correctional Facility and Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility, Prell said. The new prisons being built in Fort Madison for $116.9 million and the expansion of Mitchellville for $52 million will both have cooling systems.

Most states’ correctional officials may be paying more attention to heat precautions this year in light of a pending appeal in a Texas lawsuit, which claims 54 prisoners experienced Death Valley-like conditions in 2008 at a South Texas prison where the heat index exceeded 126 degrees for several days, according to news reports. The lawsuit claims the overheated conditions violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Only 21 of 111 Texas prisons are fully air-conditioned, according to a New York Times article. Many of the prisons that have cooling systems don’t have it areas where the inmates live. The air-conditioned areas are in medical services or where education programs are provided. Four Texas inmates in other prisons died last summer from heat-related causes and a new lawsuit was filed last month in one of those deaths.