Extreme Heat Exacerbates Dire Prison Conditions, With Few Paths to Relief

During deadly heat waves — like the near-historic one that plagued much of the United States this week — one population is particularly vulnerable: people behind bars.

Over the past two decades, extreme heat coupled with inadequate ventilation and outdated infrastructure have amplified already-grim conditions for the over one million Americans in correctional facilities. One study found that approximately 13 percent of deaths behind bars in Texas during warm months may be attributable to extreme heat. Another reported that an unsafe heat index — the “feels like” temperature — can increase violent interactions in prison by 20 percent. High temperatures also correlate with a 30 percent increase in daily suicide-watch incidents, scholars say. Even states known for cooler weather in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest are contending with stifling heat in prisons, as facilities there frequently do not have appropriate infrastructure to manage extreme heat.

As the earth warms at an “unprecedented rate,” extreme temperatures have become commonplace in some parts of the country. Last year was the warmest year on record, NASA reported, and it is only getting hotter.

But extreme temperatures are not the only source of climate-related danger to incarcerated people. Last fall, back-to-back severe hurricanes — again exacerbated by climate change — prompted evacuation orders for millions of people and devastated much of the American Southeast. As surrounding communities sought safety, incarcerated people in North Carolina were trapped in flooded cells without electricity or working toilets for up to five days after Hurricane Helene. Florida officials chose not to evacuate prisons and jails near Tampa, the part of Florida most vulnerable to Hurricane Milton’s deadly flooding, even as Tampa’s mayor told residents, “If you choose to stay, you are going to die.”

During California’s catastrophic January wildfires — fueled by hot, dry conditions scientists attributed to climate change — many incarcerated residents faced uncertain evacuation and safety plans while nearly 800 incarcerated firefighters were deployed to fight the blaze for scant pay.

Many factors compound the risks for incarcerated people. Prisons in many states were built in areas that are particularly vulnerable to climate-related emergencies. People behind bars have high rates of mental illness and chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, physical immobility, which can make extreme heat more dangerous. And as increasingly long sentences keep people in carceral settings into old age, the proportion of incarcerated people who are 55 or older has ballooned to about five times what it was three decades ago. “Older adults are at higher risk for heat-related illnesses and death,” the National institute on Aging says.

The current administration’s moves to halt climate initiatives and increase fracking and oil exports are a blow to efforts to combat climate change as a whole — and are likely to make conditions worse for incarcerated people .

Scant Federal Protections

Incarcerated people have turned to federal courts for relief, asserting that extreme temperatures are “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Constitution. The vast majority are unsuccessful.

Some have asked courts to order prisons to install air conditioning or take other measures to alleviate heat and prevent illness or death. One ongoing case, for example, asserts that people incarcerated in Texas are “being cooked to death” in un-air-conditioned units. A judge recently agreed that the state was likely violating the Eighth Amendment but denied the request for a preliminary injunction ordering installation of air conditioning; the case is scheduled for trial in March 2026. Meanwhile, people incarcerated in Texas have described splashing toilet water on themselves to keep cool and even faking mental health episodes to obtain transfers to an air-conditioned psychiatric ward.

Incarcerated plaintiffs challenging extreme temperatures in federal court have had a few notable wins over the years. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, for example, held that housing people with pre-existing medical ailments “in very hot cells without sufficient access to heat-relief measures, while knowing that each suffers from conditions that render him extremely vulnerable to serious heat-related injury, violates the Eighth Amendment.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said that holding a man in a frigid cell for more than four days and “ignor[ing] his request to fix the window or provide blankets, a coat, or any other means of warmth extreme cold” would be unconstitutional. And a district court in Tennessee held that officials violated the Eighth Amendment rights of a man held in county jail for a single week during a heat wave, in a cell with a steel door and no air conditioning. The cell was at least 110 degrees during the day and as high as 103 degrees at night. The man died of heat stroke.

More commonly, though, incarcerated plaintiffs lose. When people incarcerated in the Mississippi Delta sued over sweltering summer temperatures in their cells, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reminded them that “the Constitution does not mandate comfortable prisons,” citing a 1981 Supreme Court case. The court noted that “the temperature was recorded at ninety-five degrees or higher on only seven occasions” over a three-month period and that many factors alleviated the heat: The plaintiffs were “not required to wear many clothes,” they each had “a sink with hot and cold running water” and “a drinking cup,” and they were not forced to exercise or perform prison labor.

Indeed, the wins are miniscule compared to the number of cases filed and the urgency of the problem. Federal litigation challenging excessive heat in prisons as violating the Eighth Amendment has picked up speed as temperatures have risen. From 1980 to 2019, just over 1,200 federal cases were filed alleging that extreme temperatures in prisons constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In the last five years, court records indicate, there have been over 500 such suits filed — an increase of more than 300 percent compared to the filing rate of the 40 previous years.

Federal courts have made it very difficult for incarcerated plaintiffs to prevail on claims that their conditions are inhumane. They’ve afforded significant deference to prison and jail operators and announced burdensome standards that such plaintiffs must meet, like requiring proof that prison officials knew of and disregarded an excessive risk of harm. They’ve upheld the doctrine of qualified immunity, which shields state officials from accountability for all but the most egregious violations. And they routinely dismiss even meritorious claims for failure to comply with the onerous demands of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, such as the requirement that incarcerated people exhaust confusing avenues for administrative relief before they can file a claim in court.

Hope at the State Level?

There is reason to believe that state constitutional claims challenging climate-related conditions could have better chances of success than federal suits, at least in some states.

State courts are free to interpret their own constitutions as more protective than the federal counterpart. In particular, many state constitutions depart from the text of the Eighth Amendment, suggesting they could be read more broadly. Sixteen states prohibit “cruel or unusual punishments” — as opposed to the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual” punishments — and another six simply bar cruel punishments. In those states, then, punishments that are merely cruel, but not unusual, should be unconstitutional.

Other state constitutions contain clauses more explicitly related to prison conditions — which have no federal equivalent. For example, five state constitutions provide that “no person arrested or confined in jail shall be treated with unnecessary rigor.” Delaware’s mandates “a proper regard” for “the health of prisoners” in the “construction” of carceral facilities, Georgia’s guarantees that no one “be abused in being arrested, while under arrest, or in prison,” and Montana’s proclaims that “the dignity of the human being is inviolable.”

Plus, some states have no equivalent to the Prison Litigation Reform Act or have declined to extent qualified immunity to state defendants in situations where it would be available in federal court.

Multiple state supreme courts have already ruled that their constitutions grant broader rights than the Eighth Amendment does — though most of these cases considered protections against excessive sentencing, not inhumane conditions. But there are some promising state decisions in the prison conditions context, too. Washington’s supreme court, for example, explicitly rejected the federal standard that asks incarcerated plaintiffs to prove prison officials intended to hurt them, instead instructing courts to consider whether the conditions created an objectively significant risk of serious harm. Applying that standard, the high court found that denying a wheelchair bound man easily accessible toilet and bathing facilities violated the state constitution.

Incarcerated people in Oregon, meanwhile, have successfully relied on state constitutional provisions prohibiting both unnecessary rigor and cruel and unusual punishments to challenge a range of injustices. Courts in Oregon have ordered prisons to remove someone with mental illness from solitary confinement and provide gender-affirming care to trans people. The state high court has made clear that claims of unnecessary rigor require a “purely objective” analysis.

These rulings suggest that some state courts would also be open to extending state constitutional protections in cases challenging stifling heat or frigid conditions. But to our knowledge, no state supreme court has squarely considered whether extreme temperatures in jails and prisons violate its state constitution. We uncovered only one case that touched on the issue: In 1982, Massachusetts’s high court rejected claims that serving isolation time in cells with solid steel doors that inhibited ventilation — and thus resulted in cell temperatures up to 90 degrees — violated the Eighth Amendment or the state cognate.

Perhaps the lack of state cases in the area is an issue of inertia — when incarcerated plaintiffs researching potential claims unearth exclusively federal cases, they may not see an alternative to federal court. Or they may choose federal court because they believe they are more likely to secure representation of counsel there, because of federal programs that match uncounseled plaintiffs with pro bono attorneys and federal law allowing for collection of attorneys’ fees in civil rights actions. Some may be uncertain as to the vehicle they would use to bring a state constitutional claim: After all, very few state legislatures have passed laws authorizing private claims for violations of the state constitution, as Congress did for federal violations in 1871’s Section 1983. 

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As temperatures continue to rise, legal battles over prison conditions highlight an urgent need for reform. State legislatures must pass bills to protect incarcerated people and prisons must adopt climate-conscious policies. And when they fail to do so, advocates should consider state constitutional litigation to hold them accountable — and save lives.

Samson Tu contributed research to this article.

Ava Kaufman is the special assistant to the director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Brianna Seid is a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. 

Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot is a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program and managing editor of State Court Report.