Heat Index Inside a South Florida Prison Hit 119 Degrees, Report Says

Prisoners inside a sweltering South Florida prison were subjected to dangerously high temperatures this summer—peaking at a “real feel” of 119 degrees in one area—according to a recent expert report filed in a class action lawsuit.

The Florida Justice Institute (FJI), a nonprofit that litigates on behalf of incarcerated people and other vulnerable groups, filed a lawsuit last year challenging the lack of air conditioning in Dade Correctional Institution (Dade C.I.), a state prison in Miami-Dade County. The FJI alleges the prison violates inmates’ Eighth Amendment rights by keeping them in cells where, during the long Florida summer, the heat index—the perceived temperature when accounting for relative humidity—remains well above the 88-degree threshold where the risks for heat-related illness and death begin to significantly increase.

The FJI hired Stefano Schiavon, a University of California, Berkeley, professor focusing on commercial heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, as an expert witness to gather quantitative data on temperatures inside Dade C.I. Schiavon placed sensors throughout the prison to collect temperature readings every five minutes between May and October of this year.

Schiavon filed his report on November 2, and what he found was that the heat index inside Dade C.I. was almost never below the threshold temperature.

“Across all locations, the heat index exceeded the 88°F threshold 97% of the time,” Schiavon wrote in his report. “In some locations, the heat index exceeded the 88°F threshold 100% of the time. Even in the least hot location, the heat index exceeded that threshold 87% of the time.”

In one cell block, “there was a period in July when the heat index did not drop below 108°F for 34 consecutive hours,” Schiavon wrote. The highest recorded heat index topped out at 119 degrees in one of the prison’s dayrooms.

Schiavon found that it was usually hotter inside the prison than outside, and it didn’t cool off at night.

“During the daylight hours, it is like a battery that gets charged up by the sun,” Schiavon wrote of the prison. “Even after temperatures cool off outside, the inside of the prison remains extremely hot as the building slowly discharges its heat.”

In fact, the 119-degree heat index was recorded at 10 p.m.

“All of the data demonstrate the heat index levels are dangerously high,” Schiavon concluded.

Lack of air conditioning in old, outdated prisons has become a bigger problem as summers get hotter and longer, especially across the South. The conditions are not only miserable, prison reform advocates say, but sometimes fatal for incarcerated people.

The families of three Texas inmates who died in 2023 filed a federal lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in June, claiming their loved ones died due to extreme heat.

Texas has been fighting lawsuits for decades over the lack of air conditioning in many of its state prisons. In March, a federal judge in Texas ruled that holding inmates in brutal heat was “plainly unconstitutional” but didn’t go so far as to order the state to install air conditioning. Texas doesn’t track heat-related deaths, but a 2023 Texas Tribune analysis found that at least 41 people died in uncooled prisons during the state’s record-breaking heat wave that year.

Inmates at a Missouri prison also filed a lawsuit in May claiming they’re suffering from life-threatening extreme heat in their un-air-conditioned cells during the summer.

The FJI’s lawsuit claims heat has led to four deaths at Dade C.I. One was an 81-year-old, wheelchair-bound man, only identified as “J.B.,” who suffered from a breathing impairment. On the day J.B. was found dead in his cell, the heat index outside reached 104 degrees, and the exhaust fans in his dormitory were broken.

“As we’ve explained in our papers filed in Court, we believe the report confirms that the summer heat indexes inside Dade CI are extraordinarily high,” Dante Trevisani, the FJI’s litigation director, says. “We’re hopeful that this information can be used to protect the lives and health of people incarcerated there.”

The Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) only categorizes deaths as “homicide,” “suicide,” “accident,” and “natural,” meaning that, like Texas, deaths from heatstroke and other heat-related causes are not tracked.

In an emailed statement to Reason, the FDC declined to comment on pending litigation. However, it said it has air-conditioned units for “the most vulnerable inmate populations, including the infirmed, mentally ill, pregnant, and geriatric.”

It noted that while many of its prisons were built before air conditioning was commonplace, all of them have been audited by the American Correctional Association and found compliant.

The FDC also said that in non-air-conditioned areas, “various climate control measures are used to reduce heat, including industrial fans, exhaust systems that promote high air exchange, and ceiling or wall-mounted circulation fans.”

However, Schiavon found that the ceiling fans in Dade C.I. were too small to be effective, the caged fans “do not blow any air” into individual cells in some of the dorms, and the exhaust systems “appeared to be functioning at varying capacities.”

“In some dorms, I could feel them drawing out some air,” Schiavon wrote. “In other dorms, I could barely feel the exhaust system working at all.”