Research Hub · Colorado Environmental Justice & Incarceration Project
Fifteen people who spent decades in Colorado prisons helped map where extreme heat and cold hit hardest, what rules made it worse, and what it did to their health. This page shares findings the research team has already presented in public.
Draft for team review To be confirmed with the study team and advisory boards before public launch.
How the study worked
People with lived experience helped recruit participants and lead the conversations. Each step built on the one before.
How extreme temperatures affected each person's body and mind inside.
Focus group 1: where is it, what's in it, what is it made of, how does it feel?
Focus group 2: rules about objects, movement and people, and how lockdowns and COVID-19 changed them.
Focus group 3: health effects, what made them better or worse, and what needs to change.
Follow-up interviews to refine the renderings and the findings.
Findings shared back with the community.
The method
Participants drew the spaces they lived and worked in. An architect on the team turned each drawing into a 3D rendering. The team then coded every rendering for what's in it (vents, windows, concrete, metal, bunks, doors) and how it felt (heat, cold, drafts), and linked those details to what people said.
The result shows how buildings, rules and health risks fit together in a specific place, drawn by the people who knew it.
Spaces of exposure
Four of the spaces participants drew. The renderings have been shown in public presentations and will be added here.
Eastern plains prison · built in the 1990s · men's
Urban Front Range prison · women's
Eastern plains prison · men's
Eastern plains prison · men's
What the study found
Older facilities had no HVAC or poor ventilation, so heat and cold never let up. Unclean vents were tied to allergies and breathing problems.
Rules limited layered clothing, fans and gloves. Covering a vent or wearing extra layers could be punished. People had no control over shower temperature.
Thermals, sweatshirts and fans came only from the canteen. People without money had thin blankets and state-issued uniforms.
Kitchens and industry shops like the sewing shop were poorly ventilated and very hot.
Yard schedules, outdoor med lines and transport without outerwear kept people out in heat and cold, sometimes restrained or lying on the ground.
Participants described heat and cold used as control, and felt valued less than the program dogs, which were given ice.
Health effects participants described
From the inside
"I haven't seen a unit HVAC'ed in decades."
Study participant, urban Front Range women's prison
"If you want something to help you stay warm, you're going to buy extra clothes ... They don't give it to you."
Study participant
"You couldn't sleep until one, two o'clock in the morning because it was just so damn hot."
Study participant
Quotes as presented publicly by the research team, 2025–2026. Participants are not named.
Recommendations from the inside
People with lived experience named three top priorities. They are not in ranked order.
Fewer people inside, so fewer people are crowded into buildings that can't handle the heat and cold.
Outside oversight of prison conditions, with people who have been incarcerated on the oversight body, instead of the prison system checking its own work.
Update the rules for hotter summers and harsher cold. Safety shouldn't depend on money: provide fans, thermals and warm clothing instead of selling them only through the canteen, let people adjust what they wear, and give relief like ice and shade in summer.
The team and sources
Colorado Environmental Justice & Incarceration Project, funded by the AB Nexus grant program (CU Anschutz and CU Boulder). Team: Michael Clifton, David Ciplet, Liz Corrado, Bob Eisenman, Lily King, Serena Langdon-Dimidjian, Allison Macht, Shawhin Roudbari and Katherine LeMasters. Partners: University of Colorado Anschutz, University of Colorado Boulder, FreeWorld, and Texas Prisons Community Advocates (85 to Stay Alive).