Does Ron DeSantis Actually Want People To Die Of Heat Stroke?
He just vetoed a bill that would have installed air conditioning in three prisons, despite heat-related prisoner deaths.
I don’t know if you know this, but it gets pretty hot in the summer in Florida. In May, temperatures were hitting over 100 degrees in some areas. Now, there are a lot of bad places to be in Florida at these times (and also, let’s be real, just in general, unrelated to the heat), but one of the worst is for sure in a prison — especially considering that 75 percent of the state’s prisons have no air conditioning.
It’s not just uncomfortable, it’s dangerous. People have actually died, and after years of pointedly ignoring the problem and passing on any bill meant to ameliorate it, the state’s Republican-controlled House and Senate finally decided it was bad enough to do something about it and earmarked $300,000 for a pilot program to install some air conditioning units in three of the six detention facilities in the Miami/Dade area.
This story could have ended there. We could have all gently golf clapped Florida Republicans for doing the bare minimum. Alas, it was not to be — because Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed it.
The pilot program would have given the $300,000 to Horizon Communities Corp, a faith-based nonprofit dedicated to preparing incarcerated people for reintegration once they leave prison, which would have outfitted the dorms with mini split air conditioners, which can be attached to a wall without requiring any duct work. What a nice solution, hmm?
Not for Ron DeSantis! You’d think he’d maybe have some concern, if not for prisoners, then at least for guards (who probably voted for him), as some other Republicans in the state have had.
“When you are in the facility and you visit a dorm that does not have air conditioning, you look at the guards who are tasked with maintaining security in those spaces, it is absolutely oppressive,” Republican state Sen. Jennifer Bradley said at a 2023 hearing. The guards’ offices, unlike the dorms, are air conditioned, but as one former prison guard told NPR earlier this year, that causes a lot of guards to just stay in the offices instead of doing their jobs.
“Every day you go in there, all you’re thinking about is how hot it’s going to be in the dorm,” former corrections officer Mark 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.”
This marks the second time in as many years that DeSantis has demonstrated that he really doesn’t care if people die of heat stroke. Last April, he signed a bill barring local governments from requiring employers to give employees who work outside in the heat breaks to drink water or stand in the shade for a minute. Most normal people would see that as a good thing as well, given that heat exposure is related to around 2000 worker fatalities a year and 170,000 worker injuries (like heat stroke, heat exhaustion, etc.). But, again, not Ron DeSantis.
It’s also another kind of dangerous, mind you, being that we are talking about prisons. Extreme heat has been known to impair cognitive function and put people on edge, which is not exactly what you want in a prison. A 2021 study in Mississippi found that on days with temperatures over 80, violent incidents in prisons increased by 20 percent.
The heat problem in Florida prisons has gotten so bad that the state is actually being sued over it by a prisoner advocacy group, Florida Justice Institute, on the grounds that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. The state is arguing that it doesn’t rise to that level and that the horrific and dangerous conditions are just part of the sentence.
This suggests that it’s not just an issue of funding, but that it goes deeper than that. Like, to where DeSantis and others actually see it as a feature and not a bug. Frankly, I’m starting to wonder if the man doesn’t just have a particularly gruesome heat stroke kink.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Yes. Next question.
If you are still gop you have serious blood on your hands. It really is that simple.