Summer is here: The sun is out, the city reeks, and temperatures in prisons are rising to unhealthy levels. Across the country, prisoners are being subjected to inhumane temperatures that make those with heat sensitivities at even higher risk of complications. In Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver monologues about this annual tradition of torture in prisons in some of the hottest places in the country, including Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, and more.
“We’re supposed to run prisons, not concentration camps,” Lance Lowry, the former head of a corrections officer union in Texas, says in a clip. “These are institutions for incarceration. Incarceration is their punishment, not cooking them to death.” And, really, his initial comparison should be all it takes to put in air conditioners.