The Brief

As Southern California continues to broil under yet another heatwave, researchers have been looking at how extreme heat affects vulnerable populations, including people incarcerated in California prisons.

Hidden Hazards, a recent report from the Ella Baker Center and UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, surveyed hundreds of incarcerated people throughout California to see how extreme heat was affecting them. To learn more, LAist spoke with the report's co-author Abhilasha Bhola.

The conversation in July with LAist 89.3's Julia Paskin has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What prisons are like in the heat

LAist: What does it look like in a California prison when the heat gets upwards of 110 degrees?

Abhilasha Bhola: So in our report, we surveyed almost 600 incarcerated people across the state of California and a huge majority of them, about 66% of them, all said that extreme heat was one of the main climate hazards that they actually experienced.

Oftentimes, prisons in California don't have air conditioning, they don't have ventilation, and they don't have adequate shade structures. And I know this sounds serious, but we have to consider the particularities of incarcerated people. A lot of them are on medications, or they're older, which makes them even more vulnerable to extreme heat, heat exhaustion and heat stroke than even we would be.

Why climate change overall is a concern

LAist: What about other threats from climate change? We do expect a lot more wildfires and floods in the state.

AB: Yeah, so as we saw in our mapping, there's going to be an increase in temperature as climate change accelerates across the state. And in addition to that, a lot of incarcerated individuals have experienced wildfires close to their facilities, as well as significant flood risk.

So in our report, we actually found 18 state prisons that were particularly vulnerable to extreme temperatures, wildfires, and floods.

LAist: Are there particular facilities of concern that you'd like to flag, especially in Southern California?

AB: In Southern California, we need to look at California State Prison here in Los Angeles County, Chuckawalla State Prison, Ironwood State Prison, Richard J. Donovan [Correctional Facility]. And what we really need to think about are the prisons that are in desert areas, close to the Arizona and Nevada borders, as well as prisons that are very far south in California, close to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Those are the prisons that are going to be facing some of the worst effects of extreme heat in our region. But I want to point out that climate change is really accelerating, so just because these are the prisons that are experiencing some of the worst harms doesn't mean that folks in other prisons in traditionally cooler regions may not also be facing these harms because of lack of ventilation, air conditioning and inadequate infrastructure.

Safety during extreme weather events

LAist: What options do incarcerated people have, if any, if they feel like they're not safe during extreme weather events?

AB: Oftentimes, they are at the mercy of the administration of their facilities. California does require that there is an extreme heat plan in facilities where people have increased access to shade, ventilation, and more showers.

But in our survey, we found that [for] a lot of folks, even though they are told that they are able to access these things, [they] don't actually get access. So there isn't much that they can do because oftentimes if there's a disaster, we had folks reporting that they felt like they would just be locked in their cell and there was nothing that they could do.

Recommendations for what's next

LAist: What else would you recommend state corrections start to do to better prepare for extreme weather?

AB: There are a few things. The first is that as we see extreme weather events, and we know which prisons are most vulnerable, we need to really focus on decarceration strategies and making sure that people can get out of prison so they can have agency over themselves, their lives, and [can] take care of themselves.

In addition, we would like to see that as we close state prisons, that money that's saved from closing state prisons is reinvested in the facilities that still exist. [We also want] to make sure that there's better infrastructure and access to air conditioning. [And we want to see funds] reinvested in the communities that incarcerated people come from, which are oftentimes the same communities that face disproportionate harms of climate change, because they don't have the infrastructure to deal with extreme weather events. Or they don't have adequate shade or trees in their neighborhood. So it's really a strategy of reinvestment that is both in the prisons that still exist and also in folks' home communities.

Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the movie Moonlight, but don't expect to see him at this year's Oscars ceremony.

"I tend to stay away from the awards show," McCraney said. " I think I might have PTSD."

McCraney is referring to the viral moment from the 2017 Oscars ceremony, where La La Land was mistakenly announced as the Best Picture winner instead of Moonlight.

McCraney isn't new to theater. In fact, you could consider it his original home before his play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue launched him into the Hollywood spotlight. But when the Geffen Playhouse asked him to be their artistic director two years ago, it called him back to the stage in a different way. Tapping a screenwriter for the position was a first for the theater, but McCraney said the roles actually overlap in more ways than one.

 "The job of the screenwriter most times is to make sure that everybody is understanding where the story is going and what the 'action' of the piece is," McCraney said. "So it's not that much different than being an artistic director.  My job here is to set the artistic goal for the organization. [To] point out its virtues and pitfalls, the dangers and the obstacles, and then move collectively as a single storyteller towards that goal."

McCraney said one of the great things about living in Los Angeles is its nuanced racial and ethnic communities, and he rides his bike around the city to better experience them.

"The landscape is constantly shifting and changing," McCraney said. "For example, Westwood has drastically changed over the past 15 years and will change irrevocably with the coming of the new train station down on Wilshire. It will change again with LA28 happening."

Just like Los Angeles, the Geffen Playhouse has had multiple transformations over its more than 30 year existence. Their world premier show, Silvia Silvia Silvia, is playing until March 8. Dragon Mama, starring Sarah Porkalob, begins March 4.

"Sarah is an incredible singer and writer and has created this incredible arc through a family that is both powerful and witty, but also deeply nuanced," McCraney said. "She's sharing that family with us, and family is our first community. They are the people we learn the most from. We learn unconditional love. We learn collective bargaining. Investigating family, investigating why we stay together and how we stay together through dire circumstances is a critical investigation for us right now."

When it comes to this year's Oscars ceremony, McCraney said he's rooting for all the nominees.

"It's been an incredible season," he said. "But Sinners is an incredible film that I've seen three or four times, so I'm really excited to see how it does."

The Long Beach Community College District has agreed to pay $18 million to more than 1,450 part-time professors to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged they were forced to work unpaid hours outside the classroom, grading papers and tests, meeting with students, preparing lessons and other duties.

The settlement, which the district board quietly approved last month, still needs the judge overseeing the case to sign off. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for July 1 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. It’s likely that Judge Stuart Rice will approve the deal. Last year, he ruled that the part-timers, commonly called adjuncts, were entitled to the pay they sought, writing he found “a myriad of problems” with the district’s claims that its practices did not violate state law.

The case has made “a major impact throughout the state already,” as some districts have begun negotiating contract terms to give adjuncts what they’ve long sought — pay for time they spend prepping and grading, not just for class time, said the plaintiffs’ lawyer Eileen B. Goldsmith, in an interview. (EdSource published an investigative series in the issue, Gig By Gig At California’s Community Colleges, in 2022.)

The Long Beach district recently set aside $20 million for the settlement and associated costs, its spokesperson, Stacey Toda, told the Long Beach Post in an email. “Resolving this matter allows the District to avoid prolonged litigation and manage risk responsibly, consistent with standard practices across public higher education,” Toda wrote.

The settlement “is a big deal, it is tremendous,” said John Martin, chair of the California Part-Time Faculty Association, and a community college adjunct professor in Shasta and Butte counties.

Martin, a long-time advocate for better pay for adjuncts, is also the plaintiff in similar ongoing lawsuits, including one against the state Community College system.

In legal papers filed in the Superior Court, Goldsmith wrote that the proposed settlement, if approved, will result in 1,456 class members receiving more than “$11,000 — a very meaningful result for these class members, particularly given the novel issues in this litigation.”

The Long Beach Post contributed to this story.