Colorado Prisons Vulnerable to Natural Disasters but May Be Ill-Prepared

One third of facilities, housing about 12,700 people, are at medium to high risk of wildfire.

Fifteen are at risk of flooding while, notably, 26 had no FEMA flood risk data available at all. 

About half of facilities are at risk of extreme heat. 

The study also found that incarceration facilities are more than twice as vulnerable to flooding than Colorado schools are. That’s relevant, the authors said, because unlike prisoners, students are free to leave when flood risk arises.

Black people are significantly more likely than whites to be jailed in a facility at risk of extreme heat, while Hispanic or Latino people are at greater risk of experiencing a flood while incarcerated, the study found.

‘We’re Dying in Here’
Dashti said the team had trouble getting information from many facilities about their engineering or architectural elements, but interviews with the formerly incarcerated painted a disturbing picture.

“It’s truly horrifying to listen to,” said Barron, who conducted nine interviews and four focus groups for a separate paper that has not yet been published. 

Some interviewees recalled temperatures soaring into the upper-90s inside their cells. 

“We just want the doors open because we’re dying in here,’” one told researchers.

When air conditioning was turned on, it was often left on full blast into the cooler months, making it so frigid that ice formed inside cell windows.

Other formerly incarcerated people described being awakened in the night by wildfire smoke and stuffing clothing over vents and windows to keep ash out of their cell. Some had to wait outside in long lines in triple-digit temperatures to get their medications.

“I remember people just burning,” recalled one 46-year-old man, describing his cell mate. “He was out there all day. And he was so purple, and he had edema on his head so bad you could put your thumb in his forehead, and it would just stay.”

‘Cruel and Unusual Punishment’
Due to lack of emergency planning, prisoners in other states have been infamously left behind when natural disasters hit.

In 2005, during Hurricane Katrina, thousands were locked inside the Orleans Parish Prison for days, submerged in deep, sewage-tainted water and without power. In 2020, during wildfires in California, a wildfire came within a few miles of two state prisons. While neighbors were evacuated, prisoners were left in place.

Colorado prisons have been evacuated at least two times: In 2013, a fire forced evacuation of 900 people from Territorial Correctional Facility in Cañon City. In Barron’s interviews, a person evacuated that day described it as “chaos.” In May 2023, hundreds at the Delta Correctional Center were evacuated due to the threat of flooding.

Dashti said that, as an engineer, she has been horrified to learn of what she equates to “cruel and unusual punishment” in U.S. prisons. She hopes the findings will encourage governments to update building codes and policies to ensure that facilities are more resilient and humane in the face of more frequent and severe natural hazards expected as a result of climate change. 

“But we can’t simply engineer out way out of the problem,” she said. 

The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, imprisoning 700 out of every 100,000 people, compared to 115 out of 100,000 for its peer nations. In Colorado alone, about 31,000 people are currently behind bars. 

Dashti, Barron and their interdisciplinary research team believe more support should also be provided for education, mental health care, public housing and other means to keep people from committing crimes or help rehabilitate them when they do. 

Some prisons should be closed, they argue.

“It’s not enough to say we’ll just retrofit and add air conditioning,” said Barron. “We need to stop putting so many people in jail.”

Lisa Marshall is Associate Director of Science Storytelling, Strategic Relations and Communications, University of Colorado-Boulder. The article was originally posted to the website of the University of Colorado-Boulder.