ORLANDO, Fla. _ When Laurette Philipsen was imprisoned at Lowell Correctional Institution years ago, she said the heat was so unbearable she would wake in the middle of the night and stand in the shower, fully clothed, then lay back in bed in her drenched uniform, "just to get some type of relief."
"You get sick. You get nauseous," recalled Philipsen, 65. "You get a headache from the heat."
Blistering heat in Florida's state prisons _ some of which lack air conditioning in living spaces _ is always concern for family members and advocates during the summer months, but this year it's compounded by a recent mandate that all inmates wear masks most of the day as COVID-19 cases continue to rise.
"The heat inside prison dormitories is like nothing humans are accustomed to 'living in,'" Eric "Brent" Williams, a prisoner at Okeechobee Correctional Institution, wrote in an email to the Orlando Sentinel through the state's JPay system. "I emphasized 'living in' because it is one thing to work in extreme heat, but it is a different story to live in extreme heat (it is your existence), and this heat is extreme."
A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Corrections did not respond to emailed questions about the temperature inside its facilities.
Debra Bennett, executive director of the nonprofit inmate aid group Change Comes Now, said advocates were the ones who pressed for a mask requirement early on in the pandemic, hoping to slow the spread of the new coronavirus inside facilities.
But the fabric FDC has used to make masks for its inmates _ the same used for their uniforms _ is thick and, as the temperature has risen, inmates have described having trouble breathing, Bennett said.
Inmates also face punishment if they remove their masks when they're not supposed to.
"Some have said it makes it difficult to breathe, that it makes it unbearably hot," said Denise Rock, executive director of Florida Cares, a nonprofit group that aids incarcerated people. "So, you know, the result is that they're taking them off and when they have taken them off, FDC has taken a strict policy in several, if not many institutions, of disciplining them."
