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On the hottest day of the year so far, the laundry room at the Ash Street Jail in New Bedford is a cool 89 degrees. Across town at the Dartmouth House of Correction, the facility’s air-conditioned units never rise above 72 degrees.
Bristol County’s Dartmouth facility, which has 1,100 beds, plans to install air conditioning in the last seven of its 22 housing units before next summer. In 2024, Sheriff Paul Heroux had the option to install air conditioning at Ash Street and chose not to, since he planned to close the aging facility.
But two years later, Ash Street is nowhere closer to closing, with the jail still housing roughly 80 inmates at a given time. Heroux estimates that the county would need $10 million to $20 million to complete the necessary remodels in Dartmouth so he can finally close the New Bedford jail, built in 1888.
In the meantime, state officials and representatives are grappling with how to mitigate extreme heat in correctional facilities. A bill currently tied up in committee would set a maximum indoor temperature for prison and jail cells during the summer, but legislators have until July 31 to act before the legislative session ends.
Activists argue that extreme heat qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment, and they note that many people in the Ash Street Jail are awaiting trial or arraignment and have not been convicted of any crime. Critics argue that taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for inmates’ creature comforts.
Heroux said the issue goes beyond taxpayers’ personal feelings about incarcerated people.
“Even if you hate the inmates, do you also hate the officers?” Heroux said. “Because the work conditions are the living conditions; the living conditions are the work conditions. You can’t separate those two things.”
Heating up
This year’s Fourth of July heat wave saw “feels like” temperatures in the triple digits, a rare feat that climate scientists say is only getting more common.
In periods of extreme heat, Bristol County runs exhaust fans through the Ash Street jail, pumping out hot air as temperatures rise, Heroux said. (The facility also limits outdoor time for inmates and provides extra water and ice.) As a result, residential units remained between 14 and 17 degrees cooler than outside temperatures during this month’s heat wave, according to internal self-reported documents.
Still, those same units averaged 78 degrees by just 10 a.m., with common areas such as the kitchen and laundry room reaching highs of 82 and 89 degrees, respectively. On a 90-plus-degree afternoon in early July, Heroux estimated the indoor temperature reached the mid-80s. He did not supply an exact temperature after multiple requests.
As heat waves become more intense and more common, advocates argue that protections against extreme temperatures fall under the state’s legal obligation to provide safe and humane conditions to inmates.
Jesse White, the policy director at the Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, said she’s seen heat safety become a growing concern since she joined the organization in 2011. So far this year, PLS has received 15 heat-related complaints from incarcerated people, including one complaint from an inmate in Bristol County.
“The prison system is at the forefront of the climate crisis in that the populations that are incarcerated are disproportionately vulnerable to heat illness,” White said.
The effects of extreme heat are particularly harmful for Massachusetts’ aging prison population, White said; 32% of Massachusetts inmates are 50 years of age or older, compared to 20% of the national prison population. Incarcerated people are also more likely to be prescribed psychotropic drugs that react poorly in extreme heat.
While some Massachusetts prisons and jails provide personal fans to inmates at no cost, Ash Street jail makes fans available for purchase for $29.60.
The solutions will look different for each facility, White said, acknowledging that places like Ash Street may not be equipped for retrofitting. But one solution can work overall, she said: fewer people in jails and prisons in the first place. The state has already made it easier for older inmates to receive parole, reducing the financial burden on jails and prisons.
“We need to protect our vulnerable people and get them into environments that they have more control over, that are going to keep them safer than the correction system is capable of keeping them,” White said.
Cooling down
In the South, extreme heat has already had deadly consequences for incarcerated people. A 2022 Texas Tribune investigation found that over 50 inmates had died from extreme heat in Texas’ prisons and jails, prompting the state to mandate universal air conditioning in all its facilities by 2032. The state already prohibits indoor temperatures in prisons and jails from rising above 85 degrees.
But across New England, there is no legal limit to how hot a prison or jail cell can get. House Bill 2608, currently stuck in the House Ways and Means Committee, would make it illegal for indoor temperatures in correctional facilities to go above 78 degrees in the summer. Currently, Massachusetts law requires that indoor temperatures remain between 62 and 78 degrees from September to June, to keep inmates warm in the winter.
State officials are working to manage extreme heat even without formal regulations. Since 2024, Massachusetts’s Department of Public Health and Department of Correction have released an annual template plan on how best to mitigate extreme heat in correctional facilities. Additionally, DPH conducts heat audits of facilities that have received heat-related complaints. This year, the state has conducted four audits: of the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Bridgewater State Hospital, Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, and MCI Framingham.
In June 2025, DPH conducted a heat audit of the Ash Street Jail and identified a broken fan, but no other deficiencies. Internal documents indicate that county officials replaced the fan by July 7.
White said she’s never heard of a facility facing any sanction or financial penalty for failing to cool its inmates, leaving enforcement an open question. Ash Street Jail has had only received one heat-related grievance in the past two years, and officials failed to respond before the inmate moved on.
“Thankfully, we haven’t had anyone die from heat-related illness,” White said. “It’s just something we all live in fear of happening.”
The Bristol County House of Correction in Dartmouth is still about a year away from installing air conditioning in all of its 22 housing units, Heroux estimated, although he plans to complete the work before next summer. He agrees the conditions at Ash Street are less than ideal, but he has no plans to install air conditioning in the 138-year-old facility, which had 120 non-heat-related deficiencies in a December 2025 state inspection.
“This is just another reason why we should close Ash Street,” Heroux said.
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.
