Heatwaves expose overcrowding crisis in Europe’s ageing prisons

ORLEANS, France/ROME/BRUSSELS – On a day when temperatures were soaring past 37 deg C outside, the prisoner sat in his cell with wet towels around his window bars, trying to explain to the visiting politician how it felt to be locked up in France during a heatwave.

Most days, 29-year-old Manu stayed on his bed, trying to move as little as possible. “You have to deal with it mentally,” he said in one of France’s newer jails, Orleans-Saran prison, which opened in 2014.

Reuters was there for that July visit, and spoke to more than 40 people in France, Italy and Belgium – inmates, activists, prison directors, doctors and union representatives – many of whom described a crisis in jails where heatwaves in 2026 have exposed underlying problems with overcrowding and ageing facilities.

France must ‘fight against prison overcrowding’

France’s chief prison inspector, Dominique Simonnot, said her office was inundated with complaints from detainees when a severe heatwave hit in June, so many that her independent public office had to take on an extra employee.

“Imagine – we are suffocating in our flats, and they are three to four people in one 9 sq m cell, in a building that is not adapted, not air-conditioned, old and where the heat is overwhelming.”

South of Orleans, in Limoges, another prisoner told his lawyer and his mother that he had passed out from the heat, fallen and gashed his head as he got up to go to the toilet in the early hours of July 8 in the city’s prison.

A representative of the prison officers’ union gave Reuters a different account, also linked to the heat, saying that the inmate – who asked not to be named – had slipped while climbing up to get some fresh air at a window. Reuters did not speak to the prisoner and could not independently confirm either account.

His lawyer, Charly Salkazanov, said he had asked the prison to send the man’s medical file to get more details. “This kind of thing will happen repeatedly until the authorities wake up,” he added.

The Bordeaux regional prison service, which is responsible for Limoges prison, did not comment on the case. It said the institution had put in measures to deal with the heatwave, including increased access to showers and water, and letting inmates buy fans and sun cream.

The French Justice Ministry said it had offered inmates across the country extra showers and sun cream supplies, and increased access to water.

“In the long and medium term, we need to simply try and fight against prison overcrowding (which) accentuates the difficulties of the heatwave,” French Justice Ministry spokesperson Sacha Straub-Kahn said in late June.

Italian activists stage mass prison visit

Overall, French prisons had an average occupancy rate of 141.3 per cent as at July 1, according to government figures. Italy had a rate of 139.7 per cent in late July, prison rights group Antigone said, and Belgium’s was 121 per cent in August, according to the country’s Conseil Central de Surveillance Penitentiaire.

On July 14, an Italian coalition of prison rights activists organised simultaneous visits in 34 prisons across the country to raise awareness about what they described as inhumane conditions.

“It’s absurd that there are no refrigerators in cells, it’s absurd that there aren’t fans everywhere, it’s absurd, for example, that inmates have to spend 20 hours (a day) in their cells,” Antigone head Patrizio Gonnella said outside Rome’s Regina Coeli prison.

Italy’s Justice Ministry has allocated €800,000 (S$1.2 million) for prisons to buy fans and refrigerators for the summer and pledged to add an extra 10,000 prison spaces by the end of 2026 – but none has been created so far, ministry data shows.

In another bid to ease overcrowding, the Italian Parliament passed a law in July allowing thousands of prisoners with drug or alcohol addictions to serve sentences at home while undergoing rehabilitation programmes.

In the southern city of Cosenza, the government agreed in June to remove perspex screens from prison windows, which had been introduced to stop the delivery of banned items such as mobile phones via drones, but which seriously limited ventilation.

Tensions rise with heat in prisons

Belgian Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden said in July that the government had offered prisoners more water and showers. In an e-mail sent to prison directors on July 8, Belgium’s prison administration said heatwave measures should continue into September.

The directors of two of Belgium’s oldest prisons, in Ghent and Merksplas, said that heatwaves have led to a rise in tensions, with more fights among inmates and confrontations with staff.

In Ghent, director Pieter Van Caeneghem said the facility was housing 447 inmates despite a capacity of just 260.

“All the problems linked to overcrowding are twice or 10 times more difficult when there is a heatwave,” he said.

In Merksplas, director Serge Rooman said he had started overriding security protocols three years ago during heatwaves by leaving cell windows open at night and opening the doors of the prison to create airflow. Since then, those changes had been incorporated into official guidance.

“The fundamental problems are the buildings,” he said, pointing to single-glazed windows and a lack of ventilation.

“Nobody wins votes by saying they are going to build or renovate prisons because it’s too hot in the summer,” he added. “But in Belgium, the punishment is the deprivation of liberty – not exposure to inhuman conditions.” REUTERS