Before sunrise on June 24, a power substation fire cut electricity to the system that cools the Cuyahoga County jail in downtown Cleveland. Outside, the temperature crept toward 100. Stale, humid air thickened in the concrete high-rise jail.
Twelve hours into the all-day power outage, county officials scrambled to deliver mobile cooling units, industrial fans, ice and water for the more than 1,500 incarcerated people and employees inside. Paramedics took one correctional officer who was ill from the heat but no incarcerated people to the hospital, a county spokesperson said.
While county administrators downplay the impact of a day without air conditioning in the poorly ventilated jail, those inside told The Marshall Project – Cleveland of dangerous conditions, medical emergencies and delays in getting released that were fueled by staff call-offs.
“It was like instant sweat in the building,” said El-Rico DeJsus, 37, who spent nine days in the jail on a charge relating to her son running away from home. She found relief the moment she left the Justice Center and walked across the street to a hotel for a glass of cold water.
“Even when I got bonded out and I got downstairs, it was even hotter in the [Justice Center] lobby, it’s like somebody had the heat on.”
Excessive heat in jails and prisons is a problem across the country as American summers get hotter. The Cuyahoga County jail, built in 1976, is routinely cited in state inspections for its lack of windows. A new county jail is slated to cost nearly $1 billion and open in late 2028 or early 2029 in suburban Garfield Heights.
County officials have said that the new jail will solve these issues. In the meantime, though, men and women who work and live there say they are suffering in an old facility where, as the correctional officers’ union told The Marshall Project – Cleveland this spring, “No real air circulates.”
Alone in a cell in the jail’s medical unit, Dale Scott was struggling to breathe. Scott, 39, has stage 4 cancer in his nasal cavity. He started chemotherapy last year and has since experienced seizures, which are triggered by hot weather.
Booked into the jail on June 18, he asked not to be left alone in a cell for fear of losing consciousness, which happened twice in his first 24 hours of incarceration.
When the cooling system went down, his nose bled and he complained of difficulty standing and breathing. He said he thought an officer went to get help, but before anyone returned, he struck the metal toilet while free-falling to the concrete floor.
“Look,” he recalled saying to a jailer before her shift ended, “I didn’t come here for this. I came here to clear up a warrant on a case that I had nothing to do with. And I’m sitting here now, and I’m about to die here because you all want to play like this is a game, like it’s a joke, like my health ain’t important.”
People released in the days following the heatwave say there were good correctional officers who elevated concerns, like the guards who made the deputy warden aware of Scott’s condition and hastened his release. Scott walked out of the jail the day the cooling system restarted, more than eight hours after his bond was posted.
People housed in the jail said the general response to their pleas for help was far worse than official reports. They said the phones often did not work. Court proceedings were canceled or curtailed, prolonging some releases. Others were told they could not shower or leave their cells due to staffing shortages.
County Executive Chris Ronayne’s office has not responded to The Marshall Project – Cleveland’s request for the number of staff no-shows during the heatwave. Adam Chaloupka, general counsel for the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said a supervisor told him that nearly one in seven union correctional officers called off.
Chaloupka said that unlike other workers at the Justice Center, correctional officers don’t have the option to work from home or “even step outside for fresh air when the air conditioning system fails.”
“They must toil in the heat to ensure that the safety and security of the facility is maintained. Unfortunately, this can come with a cost to their own health and safety, as demonstrated by this officer needing medical treatment due to the excessive heat,” Chaloupka said.
The union’s request for additional compensation during the partial shutdown has been met by uncharacteristic “push back” from the county, he said.
Ronayne’s office, which did not respond to a request to interview Sheriff Harold Pretel, instead pointed to comments previously sent to local media: “The health and wellbeing of the residents and staff within the Corrections Center remain our top priority. Corrections officials continue to monitor the temperature within the facility and will allocate resources as needed.”
Karima McCree-Wilson, the Ohio operations manager for The Bail Project, a reform advocacy firm that helps pay bail, noted how the jail is structurally out of compliance with numerous state standards: no fresh air, narrow and inoperable windows, too few showers, cramped spaces, overcrowded cells and dim lighting.
“When you bring in box fans and there’s no ventilation, that doesn’t really help much,” McCree-Wilson said.
The court’s automated messaging systems did not inform defendants of canceled court hearings, said McCree-Wilson. It took longer for The Bail Project’s clients to be released from jail after posting their bonds.
Inside, people missed arraignments and other proceedings that might have accelerated their release.
Jalacia Weathers, 26, was released a day after the cooling system kicked back in.
She recalled no fan in her unit during the heatwave. Judges and prosecutors failed to appear at her video court appearances and movement in the jail, including trips to the showers, was restricted with heat and staff call-offs disrupting operations, she said.
“They had us locked up because they were saying they didn’t have enough correctional officers, so they couldn’t let us out,” Weathers said. “It was draining my body.”
