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The Issues

The focus of our work

CIRCol's research and organizing address the convergence of climate change, environmental hazards, and mass incarceration — from extreme temperatures and flooding to wildfire smoke, aging infrastructure, and toxic surroundings.

Climate and Incarceration

A hazard built into the system, not a natural event

1.9 million people are held in over 6,300 U.S. carceral facilities designed and sited without regard for a changing climate. Wildfire smoke, hurricanes and flooding, aging plumbing and electrical, toxic surroundings, and lockdowns during weather emergencies all compound to produce preventable harm — disproportionately borne by people of color, people with disabilities, and people already living in poverty. Extreme temperatures — both heat and cold — are among the most acute and best documented of these hazards.

The people inside cannot leave. The infrastructure that fails them is invisible from the outside. Documenting these conditions, and translating that documentation into legal, policy, and legislative change, is the work of the CIRCol network.

1.9M people incarcerated in the U.S.
6,300 carceral facilities nationwide
5 yrs shorter U.S. life expectancy for incarcerated individuals13

Carceral facilities have been disproportionately built in flood-prone and environmentally degraded areas, and now expose the people held inside to a compounding set of hazards — wildfire smoke, hurricanes, flooding, and failing infrastructure. Incarcerated people are more likely to suffer serious harm from those hazards because they cannot evacuate, cannot control their surroundings, and are disproportionately aging or living with chronic and mental health conditions. Those exposures are amplified by carceral policies and infrastructure: only 17 state prison systems have published disaster preparedness plans,11 and incarcerated workers routinely fight wildfires without the protective gear given to their non-incarcerated counterparts.12 The result is a preventable public health crisis borne disproportionately by people of color, people with disabilities, and people already living in poverty.

For more information, read Katherine LeMasters, Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, David Ciplet, David Cloud, Kristen Cowan, William Eisenman, Lawrence Haber, Allison Macht, and Colleen E. Reid, “Mass incarceration as a climate justice issue,” Environmental Research Letters 21 (2026): 084007.

A Leading Focus Area

Thermal justice: extreme temperatures in U.S. prisons

Thermal justice frames access to safe indoor temperature as a matter of human rights and structural equity — not comfort. Extreme heat and cold cause preventable death, illness, and mental health harm, and those harms fall hardest on people who cannot leave their environment, adjust their surroundings, or afford adaptive resources like fans, additional clothing, or cool water. For incarcerated people, temperature exposure is determined by facility infrastructure and decisions made by others. A thermal justice framework insists that the legal, physical, and financial responsibility for keeping people safe in those environments be taken seriously.14

Extreme heat and cold are among the most acute climate hazards incarcerated people face today, and the focus of CIRCol's longest-running partnership. 85 to Stay Alive — led by our partner organization Texas Prisons Community Advocates (TPCA) — has spent years turning evidence into legal and legislative change, with CIRCol research feeding directly into that work.

The harms of extreme heat

Heat inside U.S. carceral facilities routinely exceeds the thresholds used to protect other indoor workers. Carceral facilities are exposed to 5.5 more days per year above 82.4°F — the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) extreme-heat threshold — than surrounding areas.1 Indoor heat indices have reached 150°F in at least one Texas prison.2 In Texas state prisons, three-day heat waves have been associated with a 7% increase in deaths and a 15% increase in suicides.3 In California prisons, two-thirds of surveyed incarcerated people reported experiencing an extreme heat event, and 44% reported fearing for their lives due to heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke amid a lack of access to air conditioning and shade.4 One person incarcerated in Colorado described the experience as “sitting in a convection oven being slowly cooked alive.”2

The harms of extreme cold

Extreme cold is an increasing concern as winter storms become more frequent and intense. Many carceral facilities lack the insulation and heating capacity to keep indoor temperatures safe, putting incarcerated people at risk of respiratory depression, hypothermia, and worsened chronic conditions.5 Cold-related harms remain understudied relative to heat, but are a growing focus of CIRCol's research agenda.

Why incarcerated people are more vulnerable

Incarcerated people cannot leave when temperatures climb or drop, cannot open windows or adjust ventilation, and often cannot access fans, cool water, or additional clothing.6 The incarcerated population is also disproportionately older, more likely to live with chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes, and more likely to be prescribed medications — antipsychotics, antidepressants, diuretics, beta-blockers — that impair the body's ability to thermoregulate.7 In U.S. jails, 44% of those held have a history of mental illness; in state prisons, 36% do — both more than double the general population rate.8 Older adults, people with disabilities, and those in solitary confinement face the greatest exposure.

Infrastructure and policy failures

44 states lack universal air conditioning across their prison systems.9 The average California prison is 45 years old, with some facilities built in the 1800s, and most operate with ventilation rates below recommended standards.10 Where cooling infrastructure exists, it is often broken, unevenly distributed within a facility, or restricted to staff areas. Adaptive measures like commissary fans require money that most incarcerated people don't have, and disabled and older individuals are often barred from prison jobs that would let them afford one.6

+5.2% rise in prison mortality for every 10°F increase in daily summer temperature3
44 states lack universal air-conditioning in their prisons9

CIRCol contributes research that feeds directly into 85 to Stay Alive's litigation, policy, and public education work. Visit 85 to Stay Alive →

References

  1. Tuholske C, Lynch V D, Spriggs R, Ahn Y, Raymond C, Nigra A E, Parks R M. 2024. Hazardous heat exposure among incarcerated people in the United States. Nat. Sustain. 7, 394–8.
  2. Hernandez B. 2023. The deadly heat in Texas prisons is killing US. Prison Writers.
  3. Skarha J, Spangler K, Dosa D, Rich J D, Savitz D A, Zanobetti A, Chun B C. 2023. Heat-related mortality in U.S. state and private prisons: a case-crossover analysis. PLoS One 18, e0281389.
  4. Abdala A, Bhola A, Gutierrez G, Henderson E, O'Neill M. 2023. Hidden hazards: the impacts of climate change on incarcerated people in California state prisons. Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
  5. Badyal S. 2023. A song of ice and fire: the climate crisis inside America's prisons. Seton Hall Law Rev. 54, 201–39.
  6. Skarha J, Peterson M, Rich J D, Dosa D. 2020. An overlooked crisis: extreme temperature exposures in incarceration settings. Am. J. Public Health 110, S41–2.
  7. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2025. Climate change and the health of people with chronic medical conditions.
  8. Bronson J, Berzofsky M. 2017. Indicators of mental health problems reported by prisoners and jail inmates, 2011–12. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
  9. Jones A. 2019. Cruel and unusual punishment: when states don't provide air conditioning in prison. Prison Policy Initiative.
  10. Sklar R, Noth E, Kwan A, Sear D, Bertozzi S, Mosa A M. 2023. Ventilation conditions during COVID-19 outbreaks in six California state carceral institutions. PLoS One 18, e0293533.
  11. Maner M, Behne M F, Cullins Z, Cowan K N, Peterson M, Brinkley-Rubinstein L. 2022. Where do you go when your prison cell floods? Inadequacy of current climate disaster plans of US departments of correction. Am. J. Public Health 112, 1382–4.
  12. Vesoulis A. 2018. Inmates fighting California wildfires are more likely to get hurt, records show. Time.
  13. Widra E. 2017. Incarceration shortens life expectancy. Prison Policy Initiative.
  14. Haber L A, Cloud D H, Williams B A. 2025. The intersection of climate justice and criminal justice: extreme heat and health inequities in carceral facilities. JAMA 333, 843.

Compiled from Katherine LeMasters et al., “Mass incarceration as a climate justice issue,” Environmental Research Letters 21 (2026): 084007.

Additional resources from CIRCol affiliates

  1. Barron, B. N., Roudbari, S., Pezzullo, P. C., Dashti, S. and Liel, A. B. 2024. “Because we're dying in here”: A study of environmental vulnerability and climate risks in incarceration infrastructure. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 7(6), pp. 2437–2465.
  2. Brunn, K., Toledo, O., Tran, C. C., Vasudevan, A. and Venkat, B. J. 2025. Carceral heat exposure as harmful design: An integrative model for understanding the health impacts of heat on incarcerated people in the United States. Social Science & Medicine, 367, p. 117679.
  3. Ciplet, D. 2026. Climate justice or inequality lock-in? Analysis of US incarceration in a changing climate. Environmental Politics, 35(2), pp. 218–239.
  4. Glade, S., Schmitz, C., Barron, B. N., Dashti, S., Roudbari, S., Liel, A. B., Pezzullo, P. C. and Miller, S. L. 2024. Hazards and incarceration facilities: evaluating facility-level exposure to floods, wildfires, extreme heat, and landslides in Colorado. Natural Hazards Review, 25(1), p. 04023047.
  5. LeMasters, K., Brinkley-Rubinstein, L., Maner, M., Peterson, M., Nowotny, K. and Bailey, Z. 2022. Carceral epidemiology: mass incarceration and structural racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet Public Health, 7(3), pp. e287–e290.
  6. Ovienmhada, U., Diongue, A., Pellow, D. N. and Wood, D. 2024. Satellite remote sensing for environmental data justice: Perspectives from anti-prison community organizers on the uses of geospatial data. Environmental Justice, 17(3), pp. 181–192.
  7. Ovienmhada, U., Hines, M., Krisch, M., Diongue, A. T., Minchew, B. and Wood, D. R. 2024. Spatiotemporal facility-level patterns of summer heat exposure, vulnerability, and risk in United States prison landscapes. GeoHealth, 8(9), p. e2024GH001108.
  8. Skarha, J., Dominick, A., Spangler, K., Dosa, D., Rich, J. D., Savitz, D. A. and Zanobetti, A. 2022. Provision of air conditioning and heat-related mortality in Texas prisons. JAMA Network Open, 5(11), p. e2239849.
  9. Skarha, J., Spangler, K., Dosa, D., Rich, J. D., Savitz, D. A. and Zanobetti, A. 2023. Heat-related mortality in US state and private prisons: a case-crossover analysis. PLoS One, 18(3), p. e0281389.
Liz Corrado reviewing Forensic Vulnerability Modeling data mapped onto Colorado prison floor plans
Liz Corrado reviewing Forensic Vulnerability Modeling data for Colorado prisons