• Doug Holland@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    Yet intense heat has so affected imprisoned Louisiana adults that officials have had to step up suicide watches. At the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found indoor temperatures reaching 145 degrees last year. In Texas, where 70% of prison living quarters reportedly lack air conditioning, incarceration becomes execution, as climate change drives already blistering summer temperatures even higher.

    In what sense is locking people in 145° cells not torture?

    • Eheran@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That is crazy hot. And obviously very bad. I don’t know the right term for that (negligence?), but it is not torture, just like with the child in the car. Torture is with intent to get something etc., this here are “simply” shitty people that risk the health of others to… save money?

      • Doug Holland@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        Torture, says the Oxford dictionary, is “the action or practice of inflicting severe pain or suffering on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do or say something.”

        Your argument, then, is that since the prisoners would be confined in the same cells even on a cool spring morning, it’s not ‘torture’ to confine them there when it’s 145°.

        Is that where you stand?

        • Eheran@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Using the term torture for something that is negligence would strip all meaning of actual torture. Actual torture is on a whole different level. That is what I am trying to say. That does not mean that this negligence is without consequences or harmless.