Inmates plead for air conditioning in lawsuit against Department of Corrections

The lawsuit filed this week by the prison reform advocacy group Florida Justice Institute says heat at the Dade Correctional Facility contributed to the deaths of four people there and that prison officials failed to take “significant steps” to mitigate the risk posed to elderly and disabled inmates 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 Udelsmanattorney 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 the most heat-related deaths in 80 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Still, most of Florida’s aging inmates are serving their sentences in cells without air conditioning, even as the state’s soaring temperatures continue to 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 that the Secretary of the Department of Corrections Ricky Dixon told 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,” the Republican state senator said. Jennifer Bradley he said at a hearing last October.

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

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Reprinted with permission from The Associated Press.

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