As Europe endures another summer of extreme heat, prison officials, inmates and rights advocates say soaring temperatures are pushing overcrowded and ageing correctional facilities to the breaking point, exposing long-standing structural problems that governments have struggled to address.
When temperatures climbed above 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Celsius) outside, a 29-year-old French inmate named Manu sat inside his cell at Orleans-Saran prison with wet towels draped over the window bars, trying to keep the heat at bay while describing the stifling conditions to a visiting politician.
Most days, he said, the only way to cope was to stay on his bed and avoid unnecessary movement.
"You have to deal with it mentally," Manu said from the prison, which opened in 2014 and is among France's newest correctional facilities.
Reuters accompanied the July prison visit and interviewed more than 40 people in France, Italy and Belgium, including inmates, prison directors, doctors, union representatives and prison reform advocates.
