Incarcerated people in Colorado are exposed to climate-related extreme heat and cold, plus flooding and wildfires. Because they’re unable to escape these hazards, their health suffers and some die.

“I remember it being summer, and there’s no way to get away from the sun. And I remember people just burning,” said one formerly incarcerated person. “My [cellmate] at the time, … he was out there all day. And he was so purple, and he had edema on his head so bad, you could put your thumb in his forehead and [the print] would just stay.”

Another person recounted how they would escape the heat by pouring water on the ground of their cells to form a shallow pool.

“Granted, it was only a quarter-inch, at the most, deep,” they said. “But you would just strip down to your boxers and just lay on the floor in the water.”

Exposure to extreme heat, and other hazards caused by climate change, are not unique to Colorado’s prisons and jails. A study that looked at deaths of incarcerated people between 2001 and 2019 in Texas found that of more than 3,000 deaths in that time period, or 13%, could be attributable to extreme heat.

The intensity and frequency of climate disasters are increasing at the same time as 1.2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S.

Incarcerated people lack the ability to evacuate or otherwise protect themselves from heat, cold, wildfire or the effects of these disasters. This simple fact led us to investigate the vulnerability of incarcerated people to climate hazards in Colorado.

We are a collective of scholars in architecture, environmental communication, geotechnical hazards engineering, geography, sociology and structural engineering. We have spent the past four years scrutinizing the vulnerability of carceral facilities – buildings like prisons, jails and detention facilities – to climate hazards. During that time, we also looked at the experiences of formerly incarcerated individuals. Our research has resulted in three papers, an exhibit at the University of Colorado Boulder and two symposiums.

We analyzed the exposure of 110 carceral facilities in Colorado to wildfire, flood, extreme temperatures and landslides. We did so by mapping facility location and hazard exposure for single and multiple climate events, such as floods or the combination of fire and heat.

We found that 75% of the facilities we studied had a moderate or high relative exposure to one or more of the hazards. These facilities house roughly 33,300 people, or 83% of people incarcerated in Colorado.

In our most recent study from 2022 to 2023, we held a series of interviews and focus groups with formerly incarcerated people in Colorado to understand how climate hazards had affected their daily lives in detention.

We found that climate-related extreme temperatures, wildfires and flood events affected the majority, about 65% of the 35 study participants. To check the validity of what we learned from this small sample, we compared the information we collected with other investigations and projects, and found they were aligned.

The people we interviewed experienced prolonged exposure to temperatures upward of 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) and below freezing, poor air quality and water contamination. We found that Black and Latino people were disproportionately exposed to these hazards, based on the location of the facilities where they were incarcerated.

Their stories are harrowing.

“It was so cold at times in the winter that I would have every piece of clothing I had on,” one participant said. “I was also afraid to go to sleep at night because it felt like it was so cold that I would not wake up. In the morning, there’s steel toilets, and so you would have ice in your toilet.”

Another participant described the smoke of a nearby wildfire.

“The smoke actually woke me up, and it was choking. I just couldn’t breathe, and I was just coughing, coughing,” the participant said. “I asked if I could go, like, to medical, and they were just like, ‘No, you can’t go to medical at this time. There’s nothing we can do for you.’”

As extreme temperatures become more common, we believe such stories are important to collect. They offer insights into experiences that may otherwise remain unheard and provide data for a more accurate quantification of the risks incarcerated people face. Our hope is that documentation of actual conditions will provide evidence that can be used for advocacy and reform.

We discovered three common ways incarcerated people cope with their climate vulnerability: by trying to modify their environment, making commissary purchases, and lodging formal complaints.

“[W]hen it’s that hot, you’re filling out that grievance, you’re dehydrated because you can’t go to the water fountain, everybody’s mad, angry, pissed off,” said one study participant. “You have symptoms of heat exhaustion, your brain is not firing on all cylinders, and you’re sitting there trying to do the right thing, trying to follow their procedures.”

This participant, and others, told us that if they made a mistake in their formal complaints – either by misspelling a word or using the wrong technical terminology for the problem at hand – their grievance could be dismissed.

The study participants also talked about retaliation for grievances. If they were to file a lawsuit, according to an interviewee, prison staff members are “going to make it the worst that it could possibly be.” They feared inmate privileges could be taken away or, as one participant explained, people could be suddenly moved to another facility. That move could disrupt important connections with family, visitors and their communities on the inside.

Experiences such as these were corroborated by multiple participants. Prison officials did not respond to our requests for more information about their facilities or the exposure of incarcerated people to extreme weather.

Talking to formerly incarcerated people about their experiences made us eager to see the facilities we were studying ourselves to reliably assess risk, but it was almost impossible to get permission to get inside prisons or talk to the people inside.

Our requests to see building floor plans or engineering drawings, which would have allowed us to analyze the exposure of facility staff and incarcerated people to hazards such as extreme temperatures or flooding, were denied. Corrections officials said our requests raised security concerns.

Regardless of their function, jails and prisons must keep their occupants safe. We believe Colorado’s current carceral infrastructure does not provide humane spaces that protect against increasingly intense and frequent climate hazards. This produces unjust human suffering and hampers the ability of people who are incarcerated to stay healthy.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Shawhin Roudbari, University of Colorado Boulder and Shideh Dashti, University of Colorado Boulder

Read more:
We talked to 100 people about their experiences in solitary confinement – this is what we learned

Conditions in prisons during heat waves pose deadly threats to incarcerated people and prison staff

What’s hidden behind the walls of America’s prisons

Shawhin Roudbari receives funding from The National Science Foundation.

Shideh Dashti receives funding from the College of Engineering and Applied Science at University of Colorado Boulder, National Science Foundation, and Department of Energy.