Temperature-Related Mortality in U.S. State Prisons

About This Grant

Extreme weather events pose major risks for population health and mortality, particularly for incarcerated people who have limited control over their thermal environments. Several aspects of the prison built environment (such as overcrowding, insufficient heating or air-conditioning, and heat-retaining building materials) likely worsen extreme temperature exposure, yet there has been no comprehensive investigation of the health consequences of extreme temperature exposure inside US prisons. Research on non-institutionalized populations has established extreme heat and cold temperature exposures as acute contributors to cardiovascular and respiratory disease mortality, which are leading causes of death among the 1.2 million people imprisoned in the U.S. (and among the leading causes of death in incarcerated people over the age of 55, the fastest growing cohort in U.S. prisons today). This project’s overall objective is to assess extreme indoor prison temperatures in relation to mortality among incarcerated adults in the U.S. and identify prison conditions and policies that prevent these harms. Aim 1 will use state-of-the-art building science methods and leverage a unique database of prison conditions to develop the first estimates of daily indoor temperatures for facilities in the 20 largest state prison systems, including over 600 prisons and 800,000 imprisoned adults, representing over three quarters of the imprisoned adult population. Indoor temperature and humidity estimates and prison policy and conditions data will be linked with the latest data from Mortality in Correctional Institutions to examine associations with excess all-cause cardiovascular and respiratory disease mortality in prisons. Aim 2 will evaluate prison overcrowding and lack of air-conditioning as factors that may elevate risk for temperature-related mortality. Aim 3 will apply legal epidemiologic methods to develop a comprehensive database of temperature safety strategies and examine relationships with temperature-related mortality in prisons.