Jail cells: Hellishly hot

(Photo by HelenOnline)

When inmates are literally dying from the unmitigated heat within their jail cells, something evil is at hand.

This is certainly not anything that remotely

resembles compassion.  Nor does it insure

freedom from cruel or unusual punishment.

Jake Pearson of The Associated Press reports that because of climate change and a more heavily-medicated aging inmate population, “heat is a deadly risk for many prisons and jails throughout the United States.”  

In February 2014, a “mentally ill homeless veteran” (56-year-old former Marine Jerome Murdough) overheated within a hellishly-hot Rikers Island cell and died.  Murdough’s crime?  Pearson explains that he had been “jailed at the Rikers Island complex on a misdemeanor trespassing charge and was unable to make bail.”

Murdough’s 75-year-old mother stated:  I know he was yelling for help and nobody ever came.  A preliminary investigation revealed that Murdough’s “internal body temperature was 103 degrees and that the cell was 101 degrees.”

The conditions within Murdough’s cell are far from an anomaly.  Pearson refers to a recent report by the University of Texas School of Law’s Human Rights Clinic, which states that “at least 14 inmates have died from exposure to extreme heat since 2007 in state correctional facilities.”  

  

Resources

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/death-hot-jail-cell-highlights-national-issue-23762149

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/16/jerome-murdough-hot-cell-death-lawsuit_n_5336679.html

Copyright May 17, 2014 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved