Posted on 02/02/2007 8:03:43 PM PST by 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.
Our military manage.
I lived for many years without airconditioning.
So who's going to pay for my air conditioning? It's gets hot here in the summer sometimes, too, and I want some.
Me too but your shelter has to be designed for it.
IMO, agricultural reclamation of Antarctica is the way to go.
My children's private school doesn't even have air conditioning.
You pay for it yourself. If and when your state pays the wages for someone to chain you to a concrete bed in a small enclosed place, then it will be obligated to provide enough air conditioning to keep you from dying from heat stroke or dehydration. Obligated because no government at any level has the right to arbitrarily change a one-year sentence into a death penalty.
SOOOO WHAT! That's exactly what WE did last summer when it was sooo hot in our upstairs bedroom. poor wittle babies.
""I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and ack ack ack ack..yadda yadda"
lol! I wonder how much he really ate for that movie.
Where do criminals think they are going to when they serve time for their crimes, the Country Club? GitMo is a paridise compaired to most prisons in the USA....hope Gitmo doesn't become a model.
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.
Our military have access to water. There is an engineering specialty devoted to keeping fresh water available.
He wasn't given water?
Can’t do the time … don’t do the crime. Give me a break, if life is so bad in prison, clean up your act and don’t get into situations that will land you in jail.
Prisons were designed for punishment, not as a comfortable place to stay while you think up your next illegal scheme.
Had the privilege of spending 30 days in the Richland county jail, just outside of Columbia, SC back in the mid 60s Approximately 60 men stuffed into a very small cell (120’ X 120’, just a memory guess) with no ventilation (mid August) of any sort. No fans (air conditioning was a thought for the future), and the only windows were few and high up, so they were of no use. No TV or radio and showers were once a week.
Worked all day in a road gang cleaning garbage from the roadside and filling potholes.
Breakfast consisted of extremely strong coffee with tons of sugar and fried bologna, lunch was bologna sandwiches and Cool Aid. Dinner was usually some variation of chicken (occasionally bean soup).
When I left that place, the last thought in my mind was to commit another crime and possibly ending up back in that place again or any place like it.
Perhaps if we would quite pampering criminals and put them in more demanding conditions (like the one I experienced), they would be less inclined to return to a life of crime … I know that my experience with the penal system (of the bad old days) cured me for life.
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