This Labor Day, as Americans seek out relief from the heat, those working inside most of Florida's state prisons will see no such relief, as most of the facilities have no air conditioning.
I-Team Series | Crisis in Corrections
For more than two years, the ABC Action News I-Team has reported on concerns about dangerous heat and legislative efforts to provide air conditioning to state prisons.
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Last year, Ruben Saldaña, who spent nearly 20 years in prison and now mentors Orlando-area kids, said rising temperatures mean increased danger for everyone inside prison gates.
“That’s when the violence comes out. What when the officers are no longer safe within the institutions themselves," Saldaña said. “I’m not saying give us a golf course. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying create conditions where it’s not so dangerous.”
Bills to provide air conditioning have failed.
Now, a nonprofit is calling on the state to provide more transparency on heat complaints.
“This was important to us for a simple reason. Floridians of all political stripes have the right to know what their government is up to, they have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent, jails, prisons and other carceral faculties are a big part of Florida’s budget, a lot of money goes to housing inmates," Brooks Fuller, the research director for American Oversight told the I-Team.
American Oversight is a nonpartisan nonprofit that holds government officials accountable through public records.
In July, the nonprofit submitted a request asking for complaints submitted by "employees, officials or contractors regarding elevated temperatures or heat in Florida Department of Corrections facilities" and the number of complaints "by anyone detained" since May 2023.
“The start of this investigation came out of a larger body of work that we were working on, conditions of prisons in Texas," Fuller said.
That investigation revealed more than 4,200 complaints within five months in Texas.
In Florida, over more than a year, the Department of Corrections responded to American Oversight's public records request saying it had received two complaints.
One complaint was from an incarcerated individual who said the cell had "no cold water" and "he's being harassed by wing staff for being in his boxer underwear due to heat". The other was submitted through Florida Cares, a nonprofit fighting for prison reform, and said an inmate "is being kept in a cell where the ventilation is clogged up with trash and hindering the air circulation into his cell. He is burning up in his cell, and it's difficult to breath because there is no circulation."
“Why are we getting so little out of the State of Florida. We’re really concerned about that," Fuller told the I-Team. “We know that lawmakers know this is a problem, we find it really hard to believe that there would be so few complaints statewide about the conditions in those facilities knowing that there’s a problem.”
Democratic State Senator Jason Pizzo, of Miami, told the I-Team, “I have a number of Republican colleagues that know and appreciate when you have 100-degree heat index and 60+ of our state facilities don’t have air conditioning, it can seem like an 8th Amendment violation."
Pizzo said what can get lost, is the fact that this impacts staff as well - not only prisoners.
"It's not like they’re in an air conditioned bubble. They’re also there, there’s critical staffing shortages in state prisons," Pizzo said.
Pizzo said he has pushed for legislation for landlords to have to provide air conditioning to all tenants in Florida. Right now, only heat is required. He said he did this when conversations were picking up about air conditioning in state prisons, to help those on the outside as well.
“We rely on lawmakers and the Department of Corrections to keep humane conditions for vulnerable people and it’s as simple as that," Fuller said.
Last week, the I-Team contacted the Department of Corrections to give the state the opportunity to respond to American Oversight's concerns about only receiving two complaints in time period of more than a year and to ask where pilot programs stand to mitigate heat in Florida prisons.
The I-Team has not yet received a response.
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