A St. Louis-based nonprofit legal advocacy firm has sued the State of Missouri, saying that the excessive heat at a prison in Jefferson City during the summer months violates the constitutional rights of the people who are held there.
The MacArthur Justice Center filed a class-action case on Monday on behalf of six inmates at Algoa Correctional Center. All of them are especially sensitive to heat due to their age or underlying medical conditions, or have spent time in solitary confinement.
“They were not sentenced to die, and they were not sentenced to be subject to such physical and emotional trauma and torture that they are experiencing at Algoa over the summer,” said Shubra Ohri, senior counsel at MacArthur Justice and the lead attorney on the case.
The lawsuit seeks to force the Department of Corrections to work with experts to develop a heat mitigation plan that keeps the temperature in Algoa’s housing units between 65 degrees and 85 degrees. If it cannot, MacArthur is asking the department to release three of the plaintiffs who have less than a year left on their sentences.
Algoa is a minimum-security facility that houses about 1,000 inmates. The housing units were built in the 1930s and have no air conditioning, and the prison sits at the top of a hill with little shade. The lawsuit alleges that the Corrections Department does not track internal temperatures, but inmates believe it is routinely above 100 degrees in the cells.
“What's perhaps the most disturbing is that there is actually air conditioning in places where only staff can access and so they can cool off during these extreme heat, but people in their custody can't,” Ohri said.
The Corrections Department has issued guidelines that include access to limited amounts of ice, the ability to wear lighter-weight clothing and offering fans for purchase at the commissary.
But the ice regularly runs out and melts quickly, the lawsuit said, and the fans cost $25, an expense that many inmates cannot afford.
In addition, inmates in solitary confinement, known as Housing Unit 3, do not have access to electrical outlets to power the fans and can shower only three days a week. They are not allowed out of their cells and therefore cannot go to the one air-conditioned room in Algoa’s recreation area.
“In short, those detained in Housing Unit 3 have no way to cool down whatsoever,” attorneys wrote in the suit. “During the summer, the floors in Housing Unit 3 are literally soaking wet from sweat and humidity.”
Excessive heat in correctional facilities is a well-documented problem, especially in Southern states like Texas and Louisiana. But corrections officials there at least have plans to try to mitigate the heat, Ohri said.
“Here, there is no plan,” she said. “There are guidelines that are limited to about five bullet points. They are not ready for it, and we are here. We are in it.”
