Barbed wire fence at Dade County Men’s Correctional Facility Credit: Photi via Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock

Extreme heat at a Miami-area prison without air conditioning has subjected prisoners to cruel and unusual punishment, according to a federal lawsuit filed in October by the Florida Justice Institute.

Nearly three quarters of Florida prisons lack air-conditioning, and that isn’t going to be resolved during the sitting legislative session. But a pilot program proposed in the pending Florida Senate’s budget bill would provide much-needed cooling in wings of several South Florida correction facilities that provide re-entry programs for inmates.

Specifically, the $300,000 appropriation would go towards air conditioning units in dorm rooms of institutions where Horizon Communities Corp. provides its Faith & Character program, which teaches basic life skills and faith principles to inmates in several prisons in Miami-Dade County.

The idea started with prison rights advocate Connie Edson, who has worked for five years to try to give inmates relief from the scorching Florida temperatures.

In 2022, she teamed with Gainesville Democratic Rep. Yvette Hinson to implement a pilot program that tested large portable evaporative coolers at Lowell Correctional Institution in Marion County, Florida’s largest state prison. The project ultimately ended, with Department Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon telling a legislative committee in fall 2023 that they weren’t the solution.

“These portable units and some band-aid approaches we’ve tried … even the [inmate] population doesn’t like them,” he said, referring to the noise and moisture that they create.

But that hasn’t discouraged Edson, and over the past year she connected with Horizon executive director Nathan Schaidt to work with legislators on creating air-conditioning units in the dorms where Horizon provides instruction. The appropriation was offered by Miami-Dade Republican Ana Maria Rodriguez in the Senate and Republican Jim Mooney in the House, who represents Florida’s southernmost district encompassing parts of Miami-Dade and all of the Keys.

Older volunteers

Horizon relies heavily on volunteers who average between 60 and 80 years of age and who could contribute more if it weren’t so hot in those facilities, Schaidt said.

“The issue is that we don’t do that work in the chapel, we don’t do our work in education, we go down to the dorm where the men and women live. And so when you start hitting the summer months, a lot of our volunteers, they have to bow out. They can’t go and sit for two hours in that heat trying to teach these classes,” he said.

Schaidt compares what takes place on a regular basis at least eight months of the year to a college class in which the air-conditioning was broken on a specific day.

“What would they do?” he asks.”They’re probably going to cancel class. It’s very unlikely that they’re going to say, ‘Well, you paid for this and you need to sit through here, even though it’s a one-day thing and we’re working on the air conditioning but you need to be in class today.’

“We don’t have that option. They’re going to be there. And this isn’t just classes, this is their daily life, right? The issue we run into is, if you add to their inability to regulate their emotions to their inability to focus, their inability to sometimes learn and just the basic environment. Now add to that the heat. It’s a battle. It’s something that you’re fighting with over and over again.”

Since it was created in 1999, Schaidt said, Horizon has worked with thousands of men and women who have subsequently left the Florida prison system and boasts of a 5% recidivist rate. He says that if those inmates could study in a more comfortable environment with air-conditioning, those numbers might be even better.

Meanwhile, Edson has her fingers crossed that what she considers a relatively modest proposal will make it over the finish line when lawmakers unveil their 2025-2026 FY budget later this month.

A report by the global consulting firm KPMG that was released in the fall of 2023 put the costs to add air-conditioning to all of the state’s prisons at $582 million.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

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This article appears in Apr 3-9, 2025.