"Cruel and Unusual? The Lethal Toll of Hot Prisons"

[Music] it's like day-to-day torture like you dread waking up in the morning because you know you have to deal with this extreme heat I'll actually wet my floor down and I'll strip down to nothing but my boxers all and I put my fan right there going right in my face no matter what we try to do rags overhead water on the floor fans blowing on us it does absolutely no good at all it feels like I'm suffocating I feel that dread every day that why I've got to go to another day like this [Music] this summer has been the hottest ever recorded in the u.s. well digit temperatures have baked Texas and Oklahoma for more than a month unrelenting heat has caused nearly two dozen deaths over the past 24 hours alone and many of the hot imagine a heat wave one so scorching it sends the mercury to triple digits for days or even weeks now imagine you're stuck in a place with no air-conditioning and no escape this situation could kill you this year 11 elderly people suffered this nightmarish death after Hurricane Herman knocked out air-conditioning at their Florida nursing home and every year deadly heat threatens hundreds of thousands of Americans who are serving time at prisons without air-conditioning with a warming climate and 2.3 million people behind bars this American nightmare shows no signs of ending baked alive at Rikers Island an inmate found dead in a cell where the temperature had soared there appears to be a battle heating up about the temperature at the Norfolk city jail it's a national issue but I've come to Texas because I hear it's the epicenter the US has more prisoners than any country and Texas has more prisoners than any state it's also one of the hottest though most prisons have no air conditioning according to the official tally the heat has killed more than 20 inmates since 1998 the actual number could easily be higher and there are a number of lawsuits against Texas for inhumane conditions and wrongful death I'm finding out that 2011 was an especially bad year with a record heat wave when the high was a hundred and fourteen at one prison the heat index was over a hundred and fifty that year statewide the heat killed at least ten prisoners one was in for hiding a check another for DWI but they suffered an unintended death sentence because sentences got longer in the 80's and 90's there's a group of prisoners whose numbers have been growing and who are especially vulnerable to extreme heat the elderly I have heart disease high blood pressure diabetes there's three conditions that even TDC admits could make a person susceptible to extreme heat conditions Keith Cole is in year 23 of a life sentence and is now at a prison where a majority of inmates are elderly or infirm so my heart has to look a whole lot harder than the average guy just to try to cool my body down and as a result I suffer from extreme chest pains on days when it's extremely hot I get sick real fast Keith tells me he's joined six other inmates in one of a number of lawsuits against Texas for prisons extreme heat which they see is cruel and unusual punishment you've got guys on canes crutches walkers you have guys in wheelchairs it's like like gonna all fall so this is all about life and death this is about old sick handicapped people who are suffering stretching back years before the lawsuits against the state there's a long record of inmate complaints to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice one inmate wrote about feeling dizzy disoriented vomiting and having chest pains another complaint of serious heat illness and says he's notified numerous corrections officials there's one prisoner Robert Allen Webb known as Allen who seemed especially desperate he complained of being dehydrated feeling dizzy having cramps and muscle spasms and having these symptoms all day long a year later Allen complained again of dizziness and chest pain when he was walking down a prison walkway I managed to track down Allen Webb's older brother Sidney Webb who's the longtime fire chief of a Houston suburb younghui was very very close we did everything together we hunted down we fished we was junior firefighters Sydnee describes his little brother Allen as a lover of the great outdoors and someone who would do all he could to help others but as Allen grew older it seemed like he was the one who needed help he started hanging around with different crowds of people that I would not be associated with as far as so drinking alcohol and the stuff that goes along with it do you think he was an alcoholic I know he was an alcoholic I was hoping I would give him straighten out I did everything he could got him to go to a a classes and he was telling me I did not understand what he was going through later on a few years past he'd been drinking and he got in a confrontation with his landlord he got home arrested and he ended up going to Huntsville prison he was convicted of robbery for Sydney it was the last straw comes the time in your life or you can only do so much for your family and it came a point where I just had to wash my hands with my other brother and say no more Sydnee cut off contact so we didn't know that in prison his brother was diagnosed with borderline mental disability and prescribed Thorazine a psychotropic medication with serious side effects psychotropics are one of the best-known and most dangerous medications in terms of responding to heat dr. Susie Vassallo is a nationally recognized expert on heat related deaths and has served as an expert witness on behalf of the elderly prisoners and other plaintiffs in suits against Texas Texas prisons are not air-conditioned and so that people who are old and sick and on medications and have heart problems cannot stay cool enough in these hot conditions and die because of it because of the heat normally the body cools itself by sweating and dilating blood vessels but a large number of prisoners are on psychotropic or high blood pressure medications that interfere with these processes when the ability to lose heat to the environment through sweating as soon as that fails you're in a life-threatening circumstance since inmates know about the side effects some stopped taking their meds in the summer maybe that's linked to the fact that when temperatures rise the number of suicides and fights rise to Texas says that it gives prisoners access to fans cold showers and nice water but dr. Vassallo maintains that air conditioning is the only effective remedy so all the ice and showers and water and fans and saying is not effective the Texas Department of Correctional justice knows is not effective a fan does not cool the temperature of the air it only circulates the hot wind and that can be even worse we have years and years of medical science that show that fans do not protect people from death due to heat this was once a forest but in that 2011 heatwave a huge firestorm engulfed the trees as well as the nearby town of Bastrop massive wildfires have already burned more than a million acres and firefighters are struggling to keep up at this point let me go down there and look at it what's your location we're more than a thousand homes burned to the ground and two people died and those 11 prisoners who died statewide the Texas Department of Corrections effectively said don't worry the 2011 tragedy was an extremely unusual and unexpected heat event which is likely not to be repeated but I checked with the official State Climatologist Texas A&M professor John Nielsen gammon who's an expert witness for the state he says Texas is just getting hotter four of the warmest years on record have been in the past decade and the hottest 2011 far from being an outlier is a glimpse into the future the warmest summer on record for Texas and Oklahoma for that matter was 2011 we averaged about five degrees Fahrenheit above normal and we set a record for a number of days over a hundred would you have a sort of an estimate about how many days about 40 to 70 days 140 to 70 days about 100 Wow that's right do you expect there to be more summers like 2011 is that the way we're going those of it should become more likely going forward if emissions continue growing at so the the upper end of what they were projected to do the odds of a summer like 2011 is gonna gradually keep increasing that blazing heat of 2011 was becoming unbearable for Allen Webb he would call his mother often telling her how bad he felt distraught she begs Sydney to bury the hatchet with his little brother and drive her to the prison for a visit on Mother's Day so drove all the way down just me and my mother and I saw out in the glass where he's walking out through the yard coming our way and I told my mother I said that looks like Alan but he is in bad shape his pale his frail he stumbled a little bit way he's walking he just just not looked like my brother and I said ain't they giving you water and stuff here he said brother it's so hot in there the water's hot we can't already drank it listen you gettin out you were going we're gonna go fishing together so let's go over prevention recognition of symptoms and how to treat anyone who show signs of heat rated illness extreme heat in prisons is so vexing for Texas that the state produced this training video for its corrections officers with instructions on how to deal with it you and offenders should maintain an intake of at least 16 ounces of water per hour when the temperature gets over 90 degrees I think we need to really take a serious look in this country on how we run our prisons after working in the prison for years and working in law enforcement I'm always on guard with you you're always watching your back Lance Lowry is a prison guard and the head of the state's correctional officers union these are third world conditions we're supposed to run prisons not concentration camps these are institutions for incarceration the incarceration is their punishment not cooking them to death each other people who argue and say Texas prisons are not a resort so why should we cool them down working in law enforcement I've seen her in these crimes I've seen stuff that you have nightmares about you don't stop having nightmares about I've had friends they have been murdered you know I don't have love for these people we're not trying to make this Russian uh we're trying to make it you main and Lance says that it's not just the prisoners who are suffering we have been filing grievance over the last two decades on officers falling now the conditions in the prisons the lack of availability to to cool the prisons and have the officers cool themselves if I ran a nursing home and I went and cut the AC in the middle of August I would be down in the courthouse under criminal indictment Lance suspects that the number of deaths of inmates and guards due to heat may be significantly higher than the official numbers we've had officers die in these facilities several weeks ago we had a officer die at a prison after responding to a fight he is believed she she had heart conditions but this was in the afternoon and the heat of the afternoon Prison Officer Shawna Tedder was 42 she left behind a daughter and a close-knit extended family her autopsy hasn't been released but some suspect heat was the culprit we don't know if that's tied in or not you know a death might be ruled as a heart attack but the heat does contribute to to death the state has paid over half a million dollars in workers compensation claims two corrections officers for heat-related illness and injury air-conditioning all the state prisons on the other hand would cost millions too much the head of the prison system says to even contemplate asking the state legislature but I've learned that prisons in nearby Nevada and Arkansas the local jails in Texas and even the detention facility for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay are all air-conditioned and I've just discovered that the Texas prison system spent seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to air-condition the barns where pigs are being raised for its food services official policy states that pigs must be kept in a comfortable environment where the temperature does not exceed 85 degrees but for prisoners like Robert Alan Webb there was no such relief early one morning a few months after Sydney had visited his brother he received a call from the prison chaplain I said mr. Webb I'm sorry to inform you that your brother was found naked stripped down laying on the floor trying to get air he died from massive thaw heatstroke my brother's brain bull I could only imagine my brother laying there on the concrete for hauling it out for his mother but to those who didn't know him Alan Webb was just another prisoner and even if air-conditioning could have saved his life there isn't much political will for it it seemed not as a matter of survival but is making life cushy for convicts just listen to this old radio interview I came across with influential state senator john Whitmire the longtime chair of the Senate Committee on criminal justice it's from the summer of 2011 senator had one caller say that there's been eight inmates that have died because of the heat do we have inhumane conditions in our prisons let me just point out the prisons are not built for the comfort of the inmates they're built to be secure and we're not going to air-condition them one we don't want to number two we couldn't afford it if we wanted to hi this is John I've been trying to get an appointment with mr. wittmeyer this is now probably the fifth request I requested interviews with Senator wittmeyer the Texas Department of Criminal Justice the governor lieutenant governor and state attorney general everyone either declined or failed to respond the Webb family is suing the state over Allen's death but even if they win it will be cold comfort their mother has changed forever and couldn't bring herself to speak to me about the loss of her youngest son I'm feeling tense right now nervous I haven't been up here since the death of my little brother [Music] just before he died realizing he was gravely ill Robert Alan Webb asked to be buried in this austere Cemetery because he didn't want to be a burden to his family for Sydney this generosity makes his brother's death even more difficult that and the fact that Alan was up for parole in only eight months but instead he died early at the age of 51 [Music] these prisoners that has passed away in the Texas prison system they're still children or God expect them to get out of prison and take them to that fishing trip he knew was going to make it to that fishing trip and I didn't know [Music] I want everybody know he was a good brother it's not right [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: The Weather Channel

Views: 34,389

Keywords: hot prisons, extreme heat, cruel and unusual, weather channel

Id: jUhjI_qgEpk

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2017