As heat wave hits, many inmates lack air conditioning. Here’s what NC is doing about it.
While more than 90% of North Carolina’s households have access to air conditioning, thousands of inmates in the state’s prisons find themselves waiting for relief while long summer days get hotter.
Three years after the state legislature provided money to air condition North Carolina’s prisons, 34% of prison beds remain in spaces that do not have air conditioning.
An installation project is underway, but the N.C. Department of Adult Correction expects to have all housing areas in the state prison system air-conditioned by early 2026, according to a press release from the agency — a stark and sweaty wait despite the General Assembly appropriating $30 million to the project in 2021.
The DAC’s website and a spokesperson for the agency outlined the status of the work:
7,020 beds are awaiting air conditioning.
Work is underway to cool 6,034 beds.
About 1,102 bed spaces have gotten air conditioning since the project started last year.
And 148 buildings will receive “retrofits or upgrades.”
The state has a constitutional responsibility to keep incarcerated people safe, said Keisha Williams, a spokesperson for the ACLU of North Carolina, and that includes being safe from extreme heat.
“Lots of incarcerated people take mental health meds and/or have other conditions like heart disease that make them more vulnerable to heat illness,” Williams wrote in an email to The News & Observer.
Inmates suffer even in air conditioned prisons
Even at a prison that is air conditioned, some inmates say they struggle to keep cool. Nash Correctional Institution, about 45 miles east of Raleigh, stays fairly cool some summers, Nathan Summerfield said, but others have been “miserably hot.”
Two summers ago, “it was so hot I could hardly sleep at night,” Summerfield told the Charlotte Observer in a message, “and then tried to focus for college classes during the day. We would wake up sweating, sheets soaked.”
The air conditioning at Nash is aging and it sometimes malfunctions, Summerfield said. The prison is scheduled to get a new conditioning system soon, officials say.
“A lot of the prisons have old air conditioning systems,” DAC spokesperson Keith Acree said. “And keeping them maintained is a challenge.”
Ashlee Inscoe said the heat inside her dorm at Nash Correctional climbs to the mid-80s some afternoons and evenings. That has sometimes left her dehydrated and unable to sleep, said Inscoe, a transgender woman.
On Tuesday, Inscoe told the Observer in a phone interview, an inmate in his 50s was taken to a hospital for heat exhaustion. He’d been exercising in the recreation yard that morning but couldn’t get cooled off when he came inside.
Overcrowding at Nash has made matters worse, Inscoe said. Dorms designed to house 64 inmates are instead holding 108, she said.
“There’s so much extra body heat it just stays hot,” Inscoe said. “... It’s a serious problem and it causes health and safety issues.”
And as the heat rises, tempers sometimes flare, Inscoe said.
“It leads to more violence and safety problems,” she said.
‘Some people pass out’
The DAC has put in place a heat stress and management plan, which states that prisons will “deploy coolers filled with ice and water,” and ice water should be “available at least once per day, and as needed, for employees and offenders.”
Other heat stress mitigation strategies include avoiding outdoor activities, leaving windows opened, and fans installed in officer posts and dormitories.
Some housing units have temporarily closed due to the air conditioning work, with some offenders being transferred to other prisons or available beds at the same prison, according to the news release.
Omeako Brisbon, an inmate at Bertie Correctional Institution, in eastern North Carolina, said his current prison is air conditioned but he’s been in several others that weren’t.
Inmates become “miserable” in prisons without air conditioning and violence tends to increase, he said.
“Staff suffer too, and take a lot of days off so the (staff) shortage gets worse. No cold water and long lines for the dining hall,” Brisbon told the Observer in a message. “Some people pass out while trying to go eat. We have to walk outside for everything in those older prisons.”
Construction timelines for this summer anticipate cooling for 426 beds to be completed by the end of this month, another 475 beds by the end of July and 757 more in August.
Installation of air-conditioning is currently underway at 12 prison facilities, according to the DAC news release:
Albemarle Correctional Institution - Badin
Anson Correctional Institution - Wadesboro
Caswell Correctional Center - Yanceyville
Columbus Correctional Institution - Whiteville
Dan River Prison Work Farm - Yanceyville
Davidson Correctional Center - Lexington
Franklin Correctional Center - Bunn
Greene Correctional Institution - Maury
Harnett Correctional Institution - Lillington
Lumberton Correctional Institution - Lumberton
N.C. Correctional Institution for Women - Raleigh
Sampson Correctional Institution - Clinton.
It remains unclear which prisons will be completed first. Acree said the prisons that need air conditioning improvements most will be worked on first.
“About 25% of [the construction] is being done by private contractors, and about 75% of it is being done with our own resources… using our central engineering staff and our construction apprenticeship program, which uses offender labor,” Acree said.
He said many of the buildings without air conditioning are more than 50 years old.
Acree said the pace of the construction project has improved because they were able to double the amount of offenders working on the project. That’s why 12 institutions are being worked on now, compared to just three a few months back.
Under the Dome
Get the latest news about North Carolina politics from The News & Observer's award-winning team. Get the free digest sent to your inbox by signing up here.
