Nearly 75% of Colorado’s prisons are vulnerable to climate-related hazards, but most prisons are not prepared, according to research conducted by a team of engineers, scientists and architects at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
The study, which was published in Natural Hazards Review last month, looked at 110 facilities in Colorado and used climate mapping data and GIS software to assess the risk from hazards like wildfires, heat waves and floods. The idea came out of their realization that prisons were understudied.
“The incarceration system is basically kind of hiding in plain sight, and quite deliberately, I would say, understudied, in the sense that it's hard to get information about these facilities,” said Abbie Liel, one of the researchers on the study and a professor at the university.
The researchers found that most facilities faced a moderate to high risk of experiencing one of those events. Eighty-three percent of Colorado’s incarcerated population is housed in facilities with climate risks.
Among the biggest risks, researchers found many buildings are old and have outdated A/C and heating systems. Half of the facilities in the study face risks from hotter temperatures – a trend that is particularly high in Front Range prisons, according to Liel. A third of them are more vulnerable to wildfire.
Unlike non-incarcerated people, who can turn on the A/C or leave their home if a climate-related hazard starts, those who are in prison are told to stay put and have limited resources to change their living situation.
Additionally, the researchers found that people who identify as Black are more likely to be in facilities that have a risk of extreme heat, and people who identify as Hispanic or Latino are more likely to be in facilities that have a higher flood risk.
“The trends that we see in our studies are really part of an inhumane system of incarceration that affects a very large number of people in our society and disproportionately affects certain groups of people and those who are already vulnerable or disadvantaged,” Liel said.
In addition to looking at the facilities, Liel and her other research colleagues interviewed more than 30 formerly incarcerated people about their experience in relation to temperature and climate-related hazards.
Some people told researchers they were forced to use their limited funds to buy fans to alleviate the heat that often radiatesinside steel and concrete walls. Other inmates said the vents in their cells were so dusty that they looked like they had never been cleaned before – which, once a wildfire is added to the mix, could compromise their ability to breathe.
“One former inmate said, ‘There would be many times when I would walk from outside to inside on the 90 degree day and go, ‘Oh, gosh, it's hotter in here than it is outside,’ I would say anywhere from 8 to 10 degrees,’” Liel said.
Some inmates also take medications for their mental health, which can inhibit their ability to regulate body temperature, further exacerbating the intense heat or bitter cold.
“These are just like layering and layering and layering on vulnerabilities,” Liel said. “You have people who are incarcerated so they have no control over their environment and they don't have much funding to get things, they feel like they can’t complain, and they may also be super vulnerable due to their physical or mental or mental condition.”
Liel said she’d like to see prisons update their infrastructure - but that’s not the biggest problem.
“Do you really believe that someone who is in jail or prison also deserves not to have clean air, not to have clean water, to be in a facility where it might be well over 90 degrees inside?” she said. “It’s this huge additional punishment on top of the fact that they are being incarcerated.”
