When California’s workplace safety board created important indoor heat protections for workers earlier this year, the policy exempted incarcerated workers. California’s governor cited cost concerns, but this unjust exclusion was facilitated by the sadly pervasive perception that incarcerated people working and living in prisons deserve tortuous conditions. In Louisiana, when trying to persuade voters in Jefferson Davis Parish to fund a new jail, local leaders proudly touted that the facility would not include air conditioning.

Twenty-two states don’t place official limits on tolerable heat for jails and prisons to protect incarcerated workers. As a result, every summer, incarcerated people like Adrienne Boulware suffer and die due to extreme heat.

Boulware, a mother of four and grandmother of 11, was set to come home from Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in 2025. On July 4, Boulware was forced to wait in line for medication in the midday Central Valley sun for 15 minutes as temperatures soared past 111 degrees. Once she reentered the facility—which lacks air conditioning—she was overcome by heat exhaustion. She died two days later.

Boulware’s death is a consequence of decisions made by California to disregard the safety of incarcerated workers.

“Something could have been done to prevent [her death],” Boulware’s daughter told the Sacramento Bee. “And she was so close to coming home.”

Neglecting the safety of incarcerated people working in prison does not create public safety. As climate change brings more severe extreme heat to prisons and jails, the people inside deserve much better protection.

The aging infrastructure of most carceral facilities was not designed to keep the incarcerated people working and living within them cool in the face of rising annual temperatures. The heavy concrete used to build the walls and cells in many prisons absorbs heat. Too many prisons also fail to provide clean water to incarcerated people working and living in prisons, a necessity in extreme temperatures. And many California prisons are located in rural areas, far from hospitals that can help incarcerated workers who fall ill from heat stroke.

Read the full article about extreme heat in prisons by Erica Bryant at The Vera Institute of Justice.