I Watched My Neighbor Die a Preventable Death Due to Scorching Heat in Prison
Breathing was hard for all of us in the heat. I screamed for help when he collapsed but it didn’t come soon enough.
As I write this, I am sitting in a tiny, unventilated cell five stories high at Stateville Correctional Center, a prison located about 30 miles southwest of Chicago. It is a decrepit, 100-year-old prison deemed unfit for human habitation. When the temperatures outside rise into the mid-90s, which has been occurring repeatedly this summer, the heat index in my cell rises to at least 110 degrees…