As rising temperatures continue to change Wisconsin’s landscape, one group is particularly vulnerable: the nearly 23,000 men, women and youths currently housed in state Department of Corrections’ facilities.
In at least 44 states, including Wisconsin, Departments of Corrections don’t provide universal access to air conditioning. And as climate change ramps up, with its onslaught of unprecedented heat waves, conditions in prisons will only worsen.
A new study examines this link between changing climates and heat exposure, vulnerability and risk across U.S. prisons. It found that heat exposure in prisons disproportionately raises health risks, impacts people of color, and challenges infrastructure design, especially in older prisons where large system updates aren’t possible.
Complicating matters, the incarcerated population is aging and, subsequently, encountering more chronic medical conditions. Nationally, older adults make up five times as much of the prison population as they did three decades ago.
Wisconsin’s 55-and-older prison population grew from 176 in 1990 to 3,587, as of Aug. 31. The state also has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation and the third highest Black-white imprisonment disparity in the country.
Alongside these demographical shifts, people who are incarcerated are especially vulnerable to heat exposure, especially because their housing, health care and personal security depend on correctional agencies. And while it’s no surprise that regions characterized by excessive heat, like Texas, contain the most heat-exposed facilities, the study highlighted regions of the United States with recent temperature anomalies that buck the historical record, such as Wisconsin.
“Heat is one environmental indicator that I think a lot of people increasingly can relate to more given climate change, especially if they’re living in a place where the infrastructure is completely not designed to deal with extreme heat,” Ufuoma Ovienmhada, the study’s lead author, told the Journal Sentinel. “You can start to understand what people who are incarcerated might be experiencing.”
Key takeaways from the study
Ovienmhada, who received her doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology this year, has been working on the topic since late 2020, in part as a result of her focus on reimagining public safety, and the criminal justice system.
Using metrics capturing three decades of air temperature data, she and her co-authors determined that prisons with the highest temperature anomalies — meaning unusual temperature patterns — were located in the Pacific Northwest, the northeast and the parts of the Midwest.
The study found that, in half of the prisons analyzed, the air temperature at prisons was 10 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the summer average on at least one day between 2020 and 2023. Under these conditions, each day of excessive heat experienced by prisons increases the incarcerated population’s mortality risk by more than 5%.
At the same time, prisons with higher heat exposure also had poorer conditions across the board when it came to factors such as accommodating the disabled, adequate mental health treatment, staffing and medical facilities. While Ovienmhada hypothesized that there’d be some patterns around specific vulnerability exposure, she was surprised by the number of characteristics she found.
“The groups of facilities that have these vulnerability factors are also specifically hotter, and hotter by a significant degree,” Ovienmhada said.
The broader intent of the study isn’t to universalize air conditioning across U.S. prisons. Instead, it suggests mass incarceration is unsustainably costly, and alternatives are needed instead of continuing to put so many people in inhumane conditions behind bars.
What does the study say about Wisconsin specifically?
Between 2020 and 2023, every adult prison in Wisconsin had unseasonably warm summer days when compared to the period between 1990 and 2019. Most anomalous temperatures ranged from 85 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit across the state, according to the study.
Wisconsin correctional facilities, for the most part, experienced one to seven days of increased heat-mortality risk, meaning days where the prison temperatures were 10 degrees hotter than than the average on those days. Six facilities in the state had hot days like this for longer stretches, between seven and 14 days.
Generally speaking, Wisconsin has warmed 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950. It’s projected to have average temperatures more like southern Illinois or Missouri by 2050, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
Related:Cold, snowy winters are part of Wisconsin’s identity. But are they a thing of the past?
Only parts of Wisconsin correctional facilities are air conditioned
Beth Hardtke, communications director of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, confirmed that its correctional facilities are not universally air conditioned, although “it is often the case that parts of a facility will have air conditioning or air tempering while other parts do not.”
Having segmented areas with air conditioning has posed a problem, however. Green Bay, Waupun and Stanley correctional institutions had been on lockdown — or what the Department of Corrections calls “a state of modified movement” — the equivalent of more than a year from 2022 to 2024.
That meant many inmates didn’t have access to relief during 2023’s and 2024’s record-breaking summer temperatures.
Related:‘It’s been breaking everybody’s heart’: Stanley prison has been limiting inmate movement all year
Related:Signaling end to lockdowns, Waupun and Green Bay prisons resume visits, recreation
As one man currently incarcerated at New Lisbon Correctional Institution who wrote to the Journal Sentinel put it, “Last summer was the worse. Our little fans do little to combat the heat. We sweat our ass off, so do the officers.”
Despite this, according to the state DOC’s health services staff, no heat-related deaths have been documented in its facilities in the last decade.
Hardtke said that, since 2020, the DOC requires air tempering systems be included in any new construction and added in major remodeling projects. Air tempering uses the same equipment as air conditioning to remove humidity and decrease temperatures, according to Kevin Hoffman, deputy director of communications for the state DOC, but the process requires less energy than traditional air conditioning.
Work is underway, Hardtke said, on installing an air tempering system throughout the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, a nearly $10.8 million project slated for completion early next year.
Other plans on the horizon include air tempering systems in new health services units at Stanley Correctional, the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility and Dodge Correctional Institution, Hardtke said. Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, the state’s juvenile correctional facility for boys and girls in DOC’s custody, also will be installing air tempering at their school building.
In Milwaukee, the Southeast Regional Care Facility for Youth will have air tempering as well, Hardtke said.
Study highlights ‘death by design’ prison system model
Despite advances in cooling amenities, Ovienmhada said the problem speaks to the larger systemic failure of mass incarceration in the United States.
“Respite areas,” for example, are meant to provide relief from the heat within prison walls, but the study characterizes such an approach as “tenuous” because it relies on a correctional officer to escort a prisoner to relief. That condition renders those areas virtually inaccessible.
As one formerly incarcerated man included in the study put it, “You could be on the verge of a heatstroke and (they’re) not going to open your cell and escort you to respite … It’s really just the discretion of the guards and the discretion of the warden.”
Ovienmhada has spoken to many people who are incarcerated, including those who have been directly impacted by heat exposure, and, although immediate relief is desired, most don’t want to see new investments being poured into the prison systems for repairs and upgrades. What they want is an end to mass incarceration.
“They see that it’s not enough, that the prison system will always find creative and unique ways to oppress people, even with seemingly positive interventions,” Ovienmhada said. “We know the prison system is extremely broken. We really view decarceration as the most sustainable of solutions.”
Ovienmhada recently launched The Toxic Prison Mapping Project, which explores the intersection between incarceration and environmental hazards like extreme heat, flooding, air pollution, wildfires and more through interactive maps and storytelling.
Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her X (Twitter) profile at @natalie_eilbert.
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