Though it may not look like it, the world as we know it is in a free fall, steadily spiraling into climate catastrophe. Earlier this month, a defeated United Nations even issued a report preparing the world “to face the inevitability of exceeding global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius” above pre-industrial levels in the years ahead.
Exceeding that benchmark comes with epoch-defining consequences: mass displacement due to climate disasters, economic turmoil from disrupted supply chains, and widespread loss of biodiversity, among others. Each of those consequences manifests in hundreds of both concrete and increasingly novel ways. Just one of those ghoulish effects: the urgent threat that extreme heat poses to incarcerated people, whose safety and wellbeing often rank among the lowest priorities for governments scrambling to juggle the many crises of our time.
In Italy, for example, record summer heat has turned hundreds of detention centers into de facto torture chambers. As the New York Times reports, temperatures inside prison cells across the Italian peninsula have regularly exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit, choking detainees, staff and visitors alike.
Because Italy’s 200-some carceral centers lack air conditioning, let alone basic fans and ventilation systems, the unprecedented heat has placed a “significant strain on correctional facilities, exacerbating pre-existing logistical problems,” according to a report by Italian prison watchdog Antigone.
