Professor White Talks to Washington Post About Prisoners and Extreme Heat

Subjecting incarcerated people to extreme temperatures is “akin to torture,” Professor Carter White told the Washington Post in a July 30 story about a lack of air conditioning or other cooling measures in many state and federal prisons.

Recent heat waves and the death of a woman at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla on a 115-degree day have refocused attention on the safety of incarcerated people amid extreme temperatures.

“As far as I know, the United States still has the Eighth Amendment; those incarcerated were not sentenced to cruel and unusual punishment or to swelter to death in a confined space,” White told the Post.

White also spoke to the Sacramento Bee on July 25 about excessive heat in in prisons.

Carter “Cappy” White has been the supervising attorney of the King Hall Civil Rights Clinic for more than 23 years. He has been a trial and appellate lawyer for more than 35 years. The primary emphasis of his work is protecting the civil rights of incarcerated people. He has also taught courses at the law school in civil rights and pretrial skills.