Inmates plead for air conditioning in lawsuit against Florida Department of Corrections

It was the hottest September in more than a century in parts of South Florida, and Dwayne Wilson heard his 81-year-old fellow inmate gasping and screaming for help at Dade Correctional Institution, 45 miles southwest of Miami, on the edge of the Florida Everglades.

The old man was confined to a wheelchair and had been complaining of severe chest pains and shortness of breath for weeks in the airless dormitory where he is serving his sentence, according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Wilson and two others inmates in prison.

Early on the morning of Sept. 24, the wheelchair-bound inmate, who is identified in the lawsuit as JB, was heard again begging for help, according to the lawsuit. An inmate took him to the infirmary, where within 15 minutes medical staff ordered him back to his cell, according to legal filings.

A short time later, JB was found unresponsive with his mouth open, the lawsuit says.

On the day the 81-year-old died, the exhaust fans in his home weren’t working and the heat index soared to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), lawyers said. Living in jail cells without air conditioning could feel like “being locked in a sardine can with no air to breathe,” an inmate identified in the lawsuit as GM said, and the heat took a toll.

The lawsuit filed this week by the prison reform advocacy group Florida Justice Institute says heat at the facility contributed to the deaths of four people there and that prison officials failed to take “significant steps” to mitigate the risk posed by the elderly. and inmates with disabilities in their care.

The lawsuit, which names the Florida Department of Corrections, the department’s secretary and the director of DCI as defendants, alleges the conditions violate Eighth Amendment protections that prohibit cruel and unusual punishment, as well as Americans with disabilities. Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

“We had to file this lawsuit because so far they have ignored the concerns of the incarcerated people and their lawyers. And so it seems they need a court to order them to do what they should have done themselves,” said Andrew Udelsman, a staff attorney at the Florida Institute of Justice.

A Department of Corrections spokesman said the department does not comment on pending litigation and said the agency has no record of being served with the lawsuit.

Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Although the deadly heat is not new, scientists say it has been amplified in scale, frequency and duration with climate change. Last year, the United States saw its most heat-related deaths in 80 years, according to a Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Still, most of Florida’s aging inmates are serving their sentences in cells that don’t have air conditioning, even as the state’s soaring temperatures continue to soar. break records. The risk is even greater for the elderly and those with medical conditions that make them more susceptible to heat-related illness.

According to testimony Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon gave to state lawmakers last year, 75 percent of state prison housing units do not have air conditioning. Bills filed last year that would have mandated the department install air conditioning in state prisons died in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

“When you’re in the building and you’re visiting a dorm that doesn’t have air conditioning, you’re looking at the guards who are tasked with maintaining security in those spaces, it’s absolutely oppressive,” Republican state Sen. Jennifer Bradley said at a hearing. last october

“There are things we can do in our system to mitigate the heat. Or Florida will be facing a lawsuit,” she warned. “And it’s going to be a lot more expensive.”

Florida isn’t alone in facing lawsuits over dangerously hot prisons. Cases have also been filed Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico. One submitted Georgia in July it claimed a 27-year-old inmate died after being left for hours in an open-air cell without water, shade or ice.

Udelsman said he hopes the Florida lawsuit will help courts set consistent safety standards for incarcerated people at risk of exposure to deadly heat at a time when climate change exacerbates the threat to the nation’s growing population . aging and invalid the prison population.

“Courts are increasingly confirming that such conditions are unconstitutional,” Udelsman said. “We hope this trial will be another in that line … that these dominoes will continue to fall.”