The ongoing heat wave in Phoenix, Arizona is extremely extreme, so flights from the region are It’s been cancelled. However, inmates in Tent City, the infamous outdoor prison, are expected to withstand situations that are too dangerous for jets.

Tent City began as an overflow site for Maricopa County, an already packed prison in Arizona. It is housed in a fenced facility Up to 1,700 prisoners Outdoors in canvas tents that win human rights groups’ criticisms, to the extent that temperatures far exceed safe restrictions. For over 20 years, notorious former Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio, founder of Lockup, appeared to enjoy criticism at one point I’m making a public joke The tent city was a “concentration camp.” When Arpaio lost his 2016 re-elect bid, his successor pledged to demolish the facility by the end of 2017.

April, Sheriff’s Office announcement A six-month process of closing the facility.

“As of today, 380 job prisoners remain in Tent City,” Joaquin Enriquez, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, told the Daily Beast. “Work means they go to work the day and go back to the end of work and sleep in their tents. Most of these inmates are only in the tent city at night. [of the 380] It is on site during the day. That is, they work either in the second or third shift at work. ”

Even inmates leaving the facility during the day, overnight temperatures remain at the dangerous height of the entire heat wave. On Tuesday, temperatures bottomed at 90 degrees shortly before sunrise, but the Tent City’s thick canvas construction is famous for trapping heat even when external temperatures drop.

Enriquez said prisons will implement new policies during the extreme heat wave.

“Ages like this – high fever warnings – prisoners and detention officers will be given unlimited access to ice water,” he said. “Our detention officers pay close attention to officers and inmate conditions. According to standard operating procedures, if an inmate develops a medical condition due to a fever or other factors, individuals will be transferred to correctional health services.”

However, prison reform activists have advised skepticism about the sheriff’s statement.

“We understand that concessions are made to provide as much ice water as prisoners want,” said Donna Leone Hamm, director of Middle Ground Prison Reform for the Arizona-based organization. “But while prisons advertise that they are doing that, we don’t know if it’s actually happening because demand for ice water can exceed supply. And lawmakers have to constantly refill the containers they are supplying water, so it doesn’t happen exactly as advertised.”

Ham said extreme conditions could quickly prove dangerous to inmates with health problems and those who need medicine.

“The main concern is for people with medical conditions where symptoms can get worse by fever, “they have to be really, really careful about exposing someone to such a condition,” she said.

Arizona officials know what happens when people are pushed outside in the state’s dangerous heat. Less than an hour from Tent City, Perryville is a state prison complex in which a 48-year-old woman died in 2009 after being trapped in an outdoor cage for four hours during a 107-degree heat wave.

The woman, Marcia Powell, was quarantined in an outdoor enclosure after demanding that she meet a psychiatrist. The prison policy prohibits inmates from staying in cage for more than 30 minutes. However, Powell remained at least four hours outside, during which time she developed first and second burns before dying of fever-related complications.

“When her autopsy was done, her core temperature was 108. The autopsy stated that the only reason they wrote down a 108 is because it’s the thermometer is the biggest,” Ham said. “After she was killed, we were toured with the facility. I wouldn’t say ‘dead.’ She was killed.

However, Arpaio, the founder of Tent City, had openly recognized the discomfort of his prisoners during the previous heat wave.

During the heat wave in 2011, when external temperatures reached 118 and temperatures inside the tent reached 145, Arpaio showed calm towards the inmates. “What am I going to do, will I take you out of prison because it’s too hot?” he asked. Republic of Arizona. “Our men and women work here in the heat too. Do everyone feel sorry for them?”

And during the heat wave of 2003, Arpaio told prisoners“It was 120 degrees in Iraq, and soldiers lived in tents and did not commit any crimes, so please close your mouth.” The temperature outside reached 107 degrees that year, and the temperature of the tent was measured at 138 degrees.

The inmate told journalists that the fever has broken down fans in Tent City and his shoes are melting.

“You feel like you’re in the furnace,” James Zanzo told the prisoners in the city in the tent. 2003 Associated Press. “It’s inhumane.”