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Today on Rikers Island, a guard retaliated against people taking off their shirts due to the blazing NYC heat by turning off a fan.
People die in prisons and jails due to excessive heat. And due to deliberate cruelty and neglect by corrections officers.
People die in prisons and jails due to excessive heat. And due to deliberate cruelty and neglect by corrections officers.
Seth Donnelly, age 29, died of severe heat stroke in a Texas prison 3 weeks ago. His core body temperature was 106% at the time of his death; the outside temperature 100%. ktxs.com/news/local/pre…
Texas spent $7 million to fight a lawsuit that would require it to install air conditioners in its prisons. It recently settled - the cost of installing air conditioners is $4 million. At least 23 prisoners have died in Texas from heat stroke since 1998. texastribune.org/2018/08/29/tex…
Turning off a fan may seem petty and insignificant. It's not. Corrections officers killed Terrill Thomas by turning water off to his cell so he died by dehydration. nytimes.com/2018/02/12/us/…
Corrections officers can show brutal and callous disregard for people's lives. When Kelly Coltrain suffered a seizure and asked to go to the hospital, a guard instead made her mop up her vomit. She died, but he didn't report it till the next day. wusa9.com/article/news/n…
I could go on to give a thousand examples like this. But the point I most want to make is that things that should not cause people to die (like the heat) do because of horrific jail conditions and abject human cruelty.
