Wednesday, May 31, 2023

There needs to be federal laws and enforcement.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons needs to join the rest of the Biden Administration to fight the deaths caused by the climate crisis. Federal funding will have to accompany human treatment of prisoners in all states, including the deaths from the climate crisis. I guarantee these deaths don't get counted among those of floods, freezing temperatures, fire and heat.

May 23, 2023
By Aryn Baker

This chart is from 2014, (click here) but, provides insight to the type of exertional problems that exist in prisons. The Texas prison authority can start by  ending exertional movement during very hot days. 

...It’s not just uncomfortable, (click here) it can be deadly. According to research by Julie Skarha, an environmental epidemiologist at Brown University’s School of Public Health, 271 prisoners died of heat-related causes in un-air-conditioned Texas prisons between 2001 and 2019. Many more suffer heat exhaustion each year, reporting dizziness, nausea, heat rashes, and muscle cramps. “With climate change each summer is going to be worse than the last. If nothing is done about this, people will continue to die,” says Dominick, founder of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, an organization that campaigns for prisoner welfare. “We have people going in for unpaid parking tickets and [drug] possession charges, and they end up getting a death sentence because of the heat.”...