Last summer, Kenneth Barrett recalls spending 46 days — about half the summer — experiencing extreme heat in solitary confinement at Algoa Correctional Center, a minimum security prison in Jefferson City, Missouri.

In segregation, he was confined to a cell roughly the size of a parking spot for 23 hours a day. Barrett said he had brown tap water to drink, chilled only by the occasional delivery of ice. There were no electrical outlets to plug in a fan, he said. And no escape from his cell except for a warm or hot shower, three times a week. He said he remembers a correctional officer telling him that it was 107 degrees outside his cell one day, which made sense, because the overhead vents only recirculated hot air.

Algoa, a nearly century-old facility, is one of four prisons in the state with no air conditioning in any of the housing units, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections. As Barrett tells it, conditions throughout the prison are “among the worst” he’s experienced in his more than six years in prison. But it was in solitary confinement where he feared for his life: His cell had no button to push in case of a medical emergency, he said.

On May 12, attorneys with the MacArthur Justice Center, a civil rights legal organization, filed a class action lawsuit against officials at the Missouri Department of Corrections on behalf of people incarcerated at Algoa, alleging that the prison’s “brutally hot” conditions constitute cruel and unusual punishment for those forced to endure dangerous temperatures with little to no relief.

In interviews with The Marshall Project - St. Louis, and sworn statements to The MacArthur Justice Center, men incarcerated at Algoa, Ozark Correctional Center and Moberly Correctional Center described the effects of unrelenting heat in facilities with limited or no air conditioning.

Their experiences underscore the unique dangers of extreme heat for people in solitary, also known as administrative segregation (ad-seg for short), or the hole.

Barrett was among nearly two dozen incarcerated men who provided sworn statements in support of the civil rights complaint. Accounts of his experience are drawn from his sworn testimony.

“When medical emergencies like heat stroke occurred, we had to kick on the doors and scream for help,” Barrett wrote in his sworn statement. “Often, it took over an hour for anyone to come. Sometimes, no one came to help.”

Read the full article about extreme heat in solitary confinement by Ivy Scott at The Marshall Project.