Inmates demand air conditioning (Thanks to ACLU)

Grand Rapids Press ^ | 2/2/07

[Mr. Brightside]

Inmates demand air conditioning

Thursday, February 01, 2007

By Pat Shellenbarger

The Grand Rapids Press

KALAMAZOO -- The temperature outside was dipping toward the lowest this winter Wednesday, but inside the courtroom, the concern was about summer heat -- the kind that can kill.

Attorneys representing Jackson prison inmates want U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen to order the state to air condition cell blocks where sick inmates, particularly those susceptible to heat-related illnesses, are housed.

On Wednesday, the state Corrections Department, through an assistant attorney general, agreed to install equipment that will lower the temperature in one area by mid-July.

That's where 21-year-old inmate Timothy Joe Souders died of dehydration after he was shackled to a cement bed for most of four days during a heat wave last August.

Under the agreement signed by attorneys for the state and the inmates, the Corrections Department will assure that the heat index -- a combination of temperature and humidity -- in the segregation unit will not exceed 90 degrees. During the time Souders was shackled, the heat index climbed to 108 degrees, an attorney for the inmates said.

While a maximum heat index of 90 degrees is uncomfortable, it could save lives, said Elizabeth Alexander, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project.

"This is not about comfort," she said. "It's about protecting peoples' lives. It's air conditioning to what will still be a hot, uncomfortable temperature, but not a deadly temperature."

While Alexander said she understood the Corrections Department would air condition the segregation unit, Assistant Attorney General Peter Govorchin said it planned to lower the heat index by dehumidifying the air.

But the Corrections Department continues to resist demands to air condition other cell blocks in the southern Michigan Correctional Facility. An engineering firm hired by the state a year ago estimated it would cost $11.5 million to air condition the cell blocks, but an engineer who testified for the inmates Wednesday proposed a different system that would cost about $4.9 million.

Instead, the state is proposing to apply film to cell block windows to filter out some sunlight and is working on other ways to lower the temperature during summer heat waves, Govorchin said.

On hot days, the air blowing out of vents in each cell actually raises the temperature, inmate Clarence "Pepper" Moore testified.

"When we were single-celled, it was bearable," said Moore, 64, who said he has diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer, "but now that we're double-bunked" -- since about 2003 -- "it's almost unbearable. Several prisoners sleep on the floor to stay cool."

Unless the state takes steps to keep the heat index below 90 degrees in areas where ill inmates are housed "there'll be many deaths," predicted Dr. Jerry Walden, an Ann Arbor physician called as an expert witness for the inmates.

The hearing, scheduled to resume today, is part of a long-running class-action lawsuit dealing with the medical and mental health-care of inmates in the Jackson facilities.

[RunningWolf]

Its just one more piece of the human condition that we are all afflicted with :-)

[Howlin]

PLenty of people still door.

[RunningWolf]

Honk! Honk!

[Hodar]

Unless the state takes steps to keep the heat index below 90 degrees in areas where ill inmates are housed "there'll be many deaths," predicted Dr. Jerry Walden, an Ann Arbor physician called as an expert witness for the inmates.

I'm not a physician, but this makes sense to me. Keeping the temperature BELOW 90 isn't the same as setting the temperature at 72.