California Proposes Weaker Heat Protections for Prisons

2:06 PM ETDeveloping

Health Desk

In Short: Worker advocates and public health experts criticize the state's proposal for weaker indoor heat standards for correctional facilities.

California is developing heat protections for prisons that fall short of standards for other workplaces, citing the high costs of cooling aging facilities. According to draft rules released in May, Cal/OSHA has proposed protections that wouldn’t activate until temperatures reach 87 degrees, five degrees higher than for other indoor workplaces.

Stephen Knight, co-executive director of Worksafe, a California nonprofit advocating for workplace health and safety, criticized the proposal. “It’s basically a second-class standard, and we don’t accept that correction workers get weaker protections than everybody else, with no scientific or medical basis,” he said.

Eric Berg, Cal/OSHA’s deputy chief of health, research, and standards, acknowledged the unique challenges in correctional institutions. “These facilities were exempted from the indoor heat standard due to the unique challenges in the correctional institutions with complying,” he told stakeholders.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported that fewer than a quarter of the prison system’s total of 791 housing units have any type of mechanical cooling. This leaves correctional workers and incarcerated individuals vulnerable to extreme heat, which can cause heat exhaustion and heat stroke, even among those without preexisting conditions.

What's confirmed

Two years later, the Newsom administration has put forward weaker indoor heat standards for California’s correctional facilities, alarming worker advocates and public health experts who argue they would provide inadequate protections from extreme heat as the risks are worsening from climate change.
Regulators with the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA, have proposed protections that wouldn’t kick in until temperatures reach 87 degrees — 5 degrees higher than for other indoor workplaces, according to draft rules released in May.
“It’s basically a second-class standard, and we don’t accept that correction workers get weaker protections than everybody else, with no scientific or medical basis,” said Stephen Knight, co-executive director of Worksafe, a California nonprofit that pushes for workplace health and safety protections.
“These facilities were exempted from the indoor heat standard due to the unique challenges in the correctional institutions with complying,” Eric Berg, Cal/OSHA’s deputy chief of health, research, and standards, told stakeholders at a recent meeting.
Fewer than a quarter of the prison system’s total of 791 housing units have any type of mechanical cooling such as air conditioning, according to a January report on air cooling measures released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“The best way to describe it is like someone turned on the microwave, and then they put you in it,” said Leonard Brown, a community organizer with Worksafe who spent over 30 years incarcerated in 10 state prisons, including in Lancaster and at the now-closed Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe, communities where triple-digit outdoor temperatures are common.
As Californians have weathered relentless heat waves, state workplace safety regulators have repeatedly reminded employers to protect employees from heat illness by providing water, shade, cooldown areas, and additional rest breaks when temperatures climb.
But there’s a notable exception to the state’s heat safety rules: the nurses, guards, staff, and tens of thousands of incarcerated people who work in California’s aging correctional facilities that are largely not air-conditioned.

What's still developing

State agencies have estimated the price tag to cool California’s prisons could run from $900,000 to $6 billion in upfront costs, although the Newsom administration has refused to provide detailed information and declined interview requests.

Sources

Capital & Mainlink