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It’s hot outside. Really, really hot.
I’m writing this newsletter from southern Louisiana, where the heat index has easily cleared 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day for the past week, with no relief in sight.
For the men picking crops on the “farm line” at Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola prison, that means a “substantial risk of injury or death,” according to a temporary restraining order granted by federal judge Brian Jackson last month. He wrote that prison officials had shown “deliberate indifference” to the risks for workers. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of Jackson’s ruling weeks later, calling it “common sense” that “working for long hours in the summer sun without shade, sufficient rest, or adequate protective equipment poses serious health risks.” The rulings are supposed to force the Louisiana Department of Corrections to make changes that improve safety for incarcerated laborers.
So far, those changes have amounted to little more than a small pop-up tent for shade, and a few tubes of sunscreen, according to reporting this week from The Lens. Advocates fighting for changes that would keep incarcerated workers safer in excessive heat said the effort was so minimal that it “borders on bad faith.”
While Jackson did order some changes, he denied one of the primary goals of the suit — to have the farm line shut down on days when the heat index reached 88 degrees. “Agricultural labor across the South does not cease when heat index values reach 88 degrees Fahrenheit,” he wrote. The corrections department said that such a rule would effectively end the farm program, and deprive people in the prison of the fresh produce that it grows.
Samantha Kennedy, director of the Promise of Justice Initiative — the local civil rights law firm representing the workers in the suit — pushed back against the idea that labor on the farm line was comparable to agricultural work outside prison. She told me that unlike labor in the free world, farm line workers work against the threat of solitary confinement, and “while there’s a person with a gun standing 10 feet away from you telling you that you cannot stop.”
Ken Pastorick, a spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Corrections, called those claims “patently false.” In court filings, the state said farm line laborers can work at their own pace and take breaks as needed.
The state also called it “absurd” to cease farm labor due to heat when millions of people work outside every year. It’s certainly true that many people work outside in the heat, but few return home to an unairconditioned concrete cell that’s even hotter than the outside.
“If it’s 103 outside, it may be 107 to -8 inside of your cell,” Christopher Scott told The Associated Press last month. “So, you work me hard for free in this heat, then you bring me back into my cell where I’m subjected for it to be even hotter,” Scott said of his time working on a farm line in Texas.
The Lone Star State has been ground zero for legal battles over prison heat for years. Last week, that continued in a federal court hearing where prisoners argued that the extreme heat in most Texas facilities during summer constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. People incarcerated in Texas described splashing themselves with toilet water to stay cool, and faking suicide attempts to be transferred to the air-conditioned psychiatric ward — survival tactics that will be familiar if you’ve read previous editions of this newsletter on the topic.
The state has not admitted to any heat deaths since 2012, a claim researchers have roundly rejected. But during the hearing, officials conceded that extreme heat was a contributing factor in three deaths last summer, including a man whose internal temperature was nearly 108 degrees Fahrenheit when he died of a seizure.
Still, when asked about the more than 5,000 complaints from incarcerated people about the heat last summer, Texas Department of Criminal Justice Director Bryan Collier replied that maybe those complaining simply weren’t drinking enough water, reported the Austin-American Statesman.
“There was this constant deflection and blaming on incarcerated individuals,” said Dr. Amite Dominick, the president of the nonprofit Texas Prisons Community Advocates, reacting to the hearings. “I don’t understand how that cannot be construed as indifference.”
The Texas suit seeks to compel the state prison system to add air conditioning to all units, a move Collier said he’d like to make. However, he argued the change would require state lawmakers to agree to spend upwards of $1 billion — though the accuracy of that price tag has long been debated.
In Florida, Republican state Sen. Jonathan Martin has pushed back on efforts to add air conditioning to state prisons, arguing that the half-a-billion-dollar projected cost might be better spent boosting correctional officer salaries to increase retention.
But a former Florida corrections officer told Politico that the logic points in the other direction, noting that the lack of air conditioning keeps employee turnover rates high and leaves the state spending on overtime to cover for understaffing.
“You might think you’re saving in one way by not putting air conditioning in,” Mark Caruso said. “But you’re actually probably spending double the amount the other way.”
Corrections officers are one of the labor groups that possibly stand to benefit from a federal rule proposed last month that “would require employers to develop injury and illness prevention plans in order to better protect workers from heat-related injuries and death.” However, U.S. Labor Department officials told me by email that as a general rule, “prisoners are not regarded as employees under federal labor and employment laws.”
In California, where a similar state-level effort went into effect last month, prisons and jails were specifically carved out as the exception — including corrections employees — with the cost of air conditioning cited as the primary obstacle by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration.
