White-Collar Crime

Climate Change And The Criminal Justice System

The cruel torture of the climate.

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One of the worse effects of sentencing someone to prison time is what it does to that person’s health.

I had a client many years ago get sentenced to a year and a day on a tax charge. He went to a federal prison. While he was there, he lost a foot because his diabetes spun out of control. I’ve heard of prisons who think treating a cavity is best done by yanking out the affected tooth.

Which is why anyone on the cusp of a term of imprisonment is really much, much better off seeing a dentist and a doctor before they go in.

Another problem that anyone who has spent any time in a jail or prison knows — even in a lawyer visiting room — is that prisons underspend on HVAC systems, if they spend at all. In the summer, jails and prisons are sweltering. In the winter, people in federal prisons often have to put on extra clothes to sleep.

Which brings us to a collaboration between natural allies, The Marshal Project and The Weather Channel, a report and video called “Cooking Them to Death.”

The Weather Channel has been bringing a lot of attention to the notion that the climate is changing and that what people are doing is causing that change. Sure, some folks deny climate change, but some folks also would rather pray than go to the doctor. It’s a pluralistic society; people get to believe what they want, no matter how dangerously silly. Let a hundred flowers blossom.

But assuming you don’t think the earth is flat, one horrifying effect of climate change is what it’s doing to people in prison.

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The report starts with this harrowing story:

On Mother’s Day in 2011, Sidney Webb stunned his mother by suggesting that they visit his younger brother Allen in prison.

. . .

In 2009, Allen called from prison. He had been convicted of robbery. “I told him he was dead to me,” Sidney said. “I didn’t mean it, but I was trying to reach him, to say, ‘This is the end of the line.’”

. . .

That May morning, Sidney believed that God wanted him to make amends. He helped his mother into his truck and drove three hours north, past the pine forests that dot rural east Texas, to the state prison known as the Hodge Unit. Through a window in the visitation room, Sidney saw a man shuffling toward them, escorted by officers.

That can’t be Allen, he thought.

His brother appeared pale and gaunt. Allen asked for a Coca-Cola from a vending machine, which he downed before ordering another and another. Can’t you buy these from the commissary? Sidney asked. Yes, Allen said, but the cans would explode, because it was so hot in his cell. The heat was so severe, in fact, that Allen hinted he might not make it out of prison alive. If he died there, he said, the family should just let the prison bury him — he’d put them through enough.

Sidney waved off his brother’s gloomy talk and promised they’d go fishing when he got out.

A few months later, the news came in a call from a prison chaplain. “I’m sorry to inform you that your brother has passed away,” he told Sidney. Then the chaplain said something unexpected: When Allen’s body was found, it was hot to the touch. The chaplain was sure the heat had killed him and suggested that Sidney investigate.

The same political forces that affect everything in the criminal justice system come into play around air conditioning:

There is a way to prevent heat stroke in prison, of course: cooling the facilities during the hottest months. But in most states, there’s little political will to do so. On its corrections department website, Florida lists the availability of air-conditioning as one of many “misconceptions” about its prison system, along with cable television. “We couldn’t afford to do it if we wanted to,” State Sen. John Whitmire, who chairs the Texas Senate’s criminal justice committee, told an interviewer in 2011 about air-conditioning in prisons. “But number one we just don’t want to.”

It should go without saying that even people in prison are people, and that they shouldn’t die from overheating.

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As this administration starts up and revs the engines of mass incarceration, and as the planet gets hotter and hotter and our weather more erratic, this problem is going to get worse.

Matt Kaiser is a white-collar defense attorney at KaiserDillon. He’s represented stockbrokers, tax preparers, doctors, drug dealers, and political appointees in federal investigations and indicted cases. His twitter handle is @mattkaiser. His email is mkaiser@kaiserdillon.com He’d love to hear from you if you’re inclined to say something nice.

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