In prison, even the buildings sweat.
Leigh Scott spent seven years in Florida corrections facilities and remembers sticky condensation coating the dormitory walls. He was constantly sweating as well.
As a part of a work squad, Scott spent 10 hours a day running a weed eater along the side of I-75. He dreaded returning from the hot work to his dormitory. His housing unit, like those in most Florida prisons, lacked air conditioning.
Three-quarters of housing units in Florida’s prison system do not have AC, according to a statement from Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon.
With extreme heat rising in Florida as it is worldwide, and a state prison population projected to grow somewhere between 31% and 51% over the next 20 years, incarcerated people and activists are more concerned than ever about the unventilated, uncooled conditions in inmate dorms.
But the battle to bring AC to Florida’s prisons is proving to be a greater challenge than lawmakers and advocates expected.
‘You never stop sweating’
Now, as community engagement director of the Gainesville-based Released Reentry Program, Scott works to support formerly incarcerated people and reduce stigma with his podcast, “Uncarcerated.”
Back when he was in the system, he would try to trade with or pay another person for a bunk by the sides of the room. That way, he could sleep with a cool slab of concrete against his back. To this day, he falls asleep in the same position.
“I’ve already been taken off the face of the earth, put in a cage,” he said. “But then on top of that, no air conditioning, forced labor, being yelled at and screamed at by guards. It was like I was being punished on top of punished.”
Scott said he saw incarcerated people suffer heat strokes in dormitories, on work squads and at the recreation field. Independent researchers have found that people who are incarcerated are particularly susceptible to heat-related deaths. But the Florida Department of Corrections does not report heat-related illnesses or deaths as part of its inmate health and mortality data. The agency responded to an interview request with a brief statement: “The Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) has air-conditioned housing units serving the most vulnerable inmate populations, including the infirmed, mentally ill, pregnant, and geriatric.”
Another formerly incarcerated person, who asked to remain anonymous to keep time served in his youth private, remembers the sweltering heat all too well. When he entered the Reception and Medical Center in Lake Butler as a teenager in the 1980s, he was too young to be with the general population.
To stay cool, he spent most of his time lying as still as he could on his bed – if you could call it that. It was a thin mattress placed beneath a regular bed, which put his face just inches away from the frame. To this day, the 1,500-inmate intake center has air-conditioning only in its hospital dorms.
“You never stop sweating,” he said. “I’d just lay in bed all day. I’d just be still to try to not overexert myself but also not pass out.”
The claustrophobic conditions offered no reprieve from the stifling temperatures. “I can remember times that I went to sleep and I had dreams that I was dying from suffocation because it was just so hot and humid,” he said.
Extreme heat affects everyone, but especially vulnerable populations like the elderly, young children and people with chronic health conditions. And in prisons, inmates aren’t the only people impacted by the lack of air conditioning.
Mark Caruso, a former Florida corrections officer, remembers frequently getting heat rash between his legs during the summer months.
“There’s been some summers that you just dread going out into the dorms,” he said. “The minute you open the door, the heat just hits you like a ton of bricks.”
Unlike the dorms, the guard offices just a room away are air-conditioned.
“Every day you go in there, all you’re thinking about is how hot it’s going to be in the dorm,” Caruso said. “That’s the only thing on your mind, unless you’re going to sit in the officer station all day and not do what you’re supposed to do, which some officers do.”
“Every day you go in there, all you’re thinking about is how hot it’s going to be in the dorm,” Caruso said. “That’s the only thing on your mind, unless you’re going to sit in the officer station all day and not do what you’re supposed to do, which some officers do.”Mark Caruso, a former Florida corrections officer, recalled conditions in a Florida prison.
Not only does extreme heat impair cognitive function, but it also exacerbates tensions and violent outbreaks. A 2021 study of Mississippi correctional facilities found that days with an average temperature above 80 degrees Fahrenheit raised daily violent interactions by 20%.
Summer 2024 marked the warmest summer on record in Florida based on statewide average temperatures dating back to 1895, according to the Florida Climate Center. With scientists predicting with high confidence that climate change will push temperatures still higher, the risk of violence also rises.
Caruso emphasized the importance of air-conditioning not just for the prisoners' safety, but also the guards’ safety.
“I think uses of force would go down dramatically because the inmates would be more calm,” he said. “I think with the officers, if they’re less stressed in the dorms … their mental health would improve dramatically.”
Like many corrections departments across the country, Florida is experiencing a prison staffing shortage. Relieving the temperatures could contribute to greater staff retention, Caruso said.
Stagnant Solutions
The third-largest prison system in the country faces critical infrastructure needs, requiring an estimated $2.2 billion to shore up.
The FDC hired the consulting firm KPMG to analyze how to most effectively address prison infrastructure shortfalls. In a 134-page report, the firm broke down the immediate maintenance needs. It estimated modernizing Florida prisons with HVAC systems would cost $582 million.
With an aging prison system, lack of air conditioning is just one of many challenges for the FDC. The agency also has to fix aging electrical systems, worn plumbing-related fixtures and finishes and broken windows and roofs, to name a few.
And different types of housing units require different types of air conditioning.
Like the clammy air filling the dorms, legislation addressing unventilated housing units — and the deteriorating system in general — is stagnant. In 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed a $840 million plan to build a new prison and prison hospital.
In 2024 the Florida Legislature allocated and the governor approved $100 million a year for 30 years to fix the dilapidated prisons. It’s a fraction of the $2.2 billion estimated needed.
That concerns Connie Edson, an inmates’ rights activist who got involved back in 2019, when she learned from an incarcerated loved one there was no air conditioning in their housing unit.
Constructing entirely new housing units could take years, making it unclear when, if ever, most incarcerated people could access air conditioning, Edson said.
“I’ll be dead before that happens,” she said.
Two identical bills meant to reinforce inmates’ rights to air-conditioning, among other categories like sufficient meal time and access to health products, died without a hearing in the 2024 legislative session.
Without systemic change, advocates hope pilot projects could make a difference for some incarcerated people and provide models for the future. After months of talking to representatives, getting permission from prison staff, and sourcing a donated air conditioning unit, Edson launched a pilot program in 2022 at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala, Florida’s primary women’s prison, where her loved one was incarcerated. Miniature split-AC units that don’t require ductwork were installed in the room used for the dog-training program Women Offering Obedience and Friendship.
Though the effort was small – she funded her trips herself, and sourced units through donations – Edson believes it could provide a model for other prisons in Florida to follow. Given persistent defeats of larger-scale bills and budget requests, , she’s turned to a different strategy, teaming up with the prisoner advocacy group Horizons Communities Corp’s Executive Director Nathan Schaidt to secure funding for pilot programs through the 2025-26 state budget.
They have two local funding requests in the works: one sponsored by Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez, R-Miami and one by Rep. Jim Mooney Jr., R-Islamorada.
If passed, these bills would allocate funding for air conditioning in Horizons program dormitories of Everglades, Dade and Homestead correctional institutions, all in south Florida.
“Every facility is a pilot program in itself,” Edson said. “What worked at one might not work at another. But that’s why we have to start with working on what we can.”
State Rep. Yvonne Hinson, D-Gainesville, helped Edson begin her pilot program at Lowell.
“Without her vigilance, her persistence, and trust me, she's persistent, and her research, this wouldn't be happening,” Hinson said. “This could be quantum leap years down the road, had it not been for Connie, and she should feel pretty victorious about that.”
‘The Constitution does not mandate comfortable prisons’
In the wake of the FDCs slow-moving action, other organizations are taking legal action to catalyze change.
A recent lawsuit filed by the Florida Justice Institute, a prison reform advocacy group, argues that prison officials at Dade Correctional Institution failed to take “meaningful action” to protect their elderly and disabled populations from the heat. It also details several instances of death and illness among the population that they attribute to the prison’s extreme temperatures.
The FDC classifies fatalities in four broad categories: “homicide,” “suicide,” “accident,” and “natural.” Deaths by heat stroke are usually classified as “natural,” according to the case.
In one instance, plaintiff Dwane Wilson recalls finding his 81-year-old wheelchair-bound neighbor, referred to in the lawsuit as J.B., lying on the floor of his one-man cell gasping and begging for help.
J.B. complained for weeks of severe chest pain and shortened breath. Fellow prisoners noticed his wheezing was worse in the unventilated air of his dorm compared to outside, in the chow hall or the infirmary.
But infirmary trips were futile — he was repeatedly sent back within half an hour, even accused by staff of coming to the clinic just to get out of the heat, the case states.
J.B. lived in H Dorm, commonly known as “Hell Dorm” among the incarcerated at Dade CI, according to the case. In place of windows sit metal slabs perforated with holes the size of a pencil. Humidity mixes with tobacco smoke, mold spores and occasionally backed-up sewage from the drains, the case asserts, creating a stuffy and contaminated atmosphere.
In the early hours of Sept. 24, another person once again heard J.B.’s cries for help and took him to the infirmary. After just 15 minutes, he was sent back to his unventilated dorm for a final time.
Later that morning, his dormmates found him lifeless on the bed, his mouth gaping open in his final gasp for air.
The exhaust fans in the H dorm were not functioning that day. The heat index was 104 degrees.
Andrew Udelesman is a trial attorney with Miami-based firm Freidin Brown, P.A., working on the case. He previously worked for the Florida Justice Institute, and said the most eye-opening aspect of the case is hearing the desperate methods inmates use to beat the heat.
Some wet their sheets, strip to their underwear and go to sleep on the concrete ground. An individual in solitary confinement bathed himself in toilet water at night, according to the suit.
The cost of modernizing AC is a manageable amount of money for the state, Udelsman said. What’s keeping them from fixing infrastructure, he said, is priorities.
In December, lawyers for the Florida Department of Corrections, Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon and Dade Correctional Institution Warden Francisco Acosta filed a motion seeking to dismiss the lawsuit.
The motion discounts the argument that officials are violating the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment, saying “the Constitution does not mandate comfortable prisons.”
According to the case docket, a jury trial is set for July 13, 2026, before Judge Kathleen M. Williams.
“In this country, we can make prison a place that is not just for suffering,” he said. “It can be a place that is much better for people. But again, you know this state is not willing to invest to get that result without intervention of the courts.”
Though progress has been slow, he is optimistic for the future of Florida prisons.
“I think it’s inevitable that the state will implement some form of climate control,” Udelesman said. “It’s a matter of when. It’s a matter of how. And of course, our position is it needs to happen now.”
