At my son’s prison, it’s 116 degrees

My son is in a prison in California’s Central Valley, where recently the temperature was 116 degrees. His facility has “swamp coolers,” which use a fan to blow moist air. The temperature inside the prison buildings can reach upwards of 95 degrees, with no respite. He and his fellow inmates can’t catch a breeze outside or have access to ice water to drink. They can’t escape the heat by fleeing to public pools, the mall, or public libraries.

The issue of basic, humane treatment of prison inmates has been pushed aside for too long. Climate change is worsening each year, and prisoners are dying in many Southern states where there is no air-conditioning. At least 23 Texas inmates have died from heat-related illnesses since 1998. Much the same is happening in facilities without air-conditioning in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

The men and women incarcerated in this country were not sentenced to torture and death. Their basic human rights are being ignored. America’s prisons have a “soul-chilling inhumanity,” as one judge put it; he and others have spoken of the structural inadequacies, poor plumbing, space limitations, inadequate diet and health care, inadequate exercise and recreation, and inadequate provision for personal hygiene. These are violations of the Eighth and 14th Amendments, which ban cruel and unusual punishments and protect against discrimination or unequal treatment.

I recently interviewed a 60-year-old man who is serving an eight-year sentence in a North Carolina prison. He only agreed to speak with me on the condition of anonymity, as he fears retaliation. “If I was a German shepherd I’d be treated with more basic regard for life,” he told me. “I was just given my dinner at 3 p.m.: a pressed chicken patty with gristle that I had to swallow whole, a small helping of white rice, overly cooked broccoli — just the stems sitting in water — and a small orange the size of a racquetball. I’ve been told we are served food that comes in boxes labeled ‘not fit for human consumption.’” He told me that his next meal would not come for 16 hours.

In addition to a lack of adequate nutrition, health care is essentially nonexistent and suffers from a lack of adequate staff. “A month ago, a 52-year-old man was having a heart attack, but the so-called nurse said disdainfully that he was faking and did nothing,” the man told me. “He died.”

We need to stop closing our eyes and turning away from suffering. It’s time to blow this issue up, write to governors and legislators, and publish articles in national publications and on social media to make people aware. That’s why I’m writing this op-ed.

This is America, not some developing country. We seem to have lost our humanity — especially when compared with many European prisons that are based on dignity instead of dehumanization.

» READ MORE: In prison, a phone was my lifeline. Until I got caught with it. | Opinion

Go online and read about the Halden Maximum Security Prison in Norway, or any of the prisons in any Scandinavian country. In Germany, the warden of one of the prisons told a group of American criminal justice visitors that prisoners are treated as “normal” as possible to make them suitable for life outside of prison once they have served their sentence. “Their punishment is their incarceration,” the warden said. “It’s not our job as correctional professionals to punish somebody even more while they’re incarcerated.”

Imagine if American prisons had the same attitude?

Countries like Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Norway make a choice to run their prisons differently — not monetize them. In the United States, incarceration is a “big business” that has spawned huge conglomerates like Global Tel-Link in Houston and GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, which provide for-profit private prisons, the bail industry, and more. These European countries also operate from a human dignity approach, remembering that these men and women will eventually reintegrate into our communities to hopefully lead productive, socially responsible lives.

How will the inmates in American prisons reintegrate if they have been mistreated as less than human, have had inadequate health and mental health care (COVID-19 is still running rampant), and rehabilitation has largely been absent?

We all should care more. Our humanity depends upon it.

Cheryl Smith is an artist in Oceanside, Calif.