Even the highest prison walls can’t keep out the heat. As temperatures rise past 40°C (104°F) across swaths of France, the heat creeps through thick concrete, slips down hollow pipes and seeps under the reinforced doors that divide the prisoners from the free. France’s prisons were not built to withstand these temperatures. Prisoners complain of scalding water spraying from the showers; prison guards, of centuries-old walls that hold the day’s heat through to the early light of dawn. André Ferragne, the secretary-general of France’s Inspector General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty, said that just about everything about how France’s prisons were set up made them deeply unsuited to the heatwaves that sweep the country with increasing intensity each summer. “Firstly, prison buildings are often run-down, poorly maintained and, of course, very, very poorly insulated,” he said. “So they offer absolutely no protection against the heat, or indeed against the cold.”
Power outages and melting roads: Heatwave strains French infrastructure
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