Minnesota prison resolves dispute with 100 inmates refusing to return to cells
A Minnesota prison was put on lockdown after about 100 incarcerated people refused to return to their cells on Sunday morning amid extreme temperatures.
The dispute at the Stillwater prison, Minnesota’s largest close-security institution for adult men, was resolved “peacefully” on Sunday, according to an update from Paul Schnell, commissioner of the Minnesota department of corrections.
The incarcerated men had refused to return to their cells after they had limited access to showers, phone use and recreation “due to staffing challenges” this weekend and amid record-breaking heat in the region.
The prison in Bayport is located about 25 miles east of Minneapolis, which was under a heat advisory for temperatures nearing 100F (37.7C).
No injuries were reported at the Stillwater prison, where the agency brought in negotiators and prison officers who specialize in responding to riots.
A press conference is scheduled for Labor Day.
Advocates, some of whom have family members inside, from the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee and the MN Wrongfully Convicted Judicial Reform rallied outside the prison on Sunday.
The Minnesota department of corrections did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.
Communities United Against Police Brutality, another local activist group, posted on Facebook that the prisoners were “protesting a lack of access to clean water”, ice and showers.
“They have been locked in with no access to ice or showers for days due to understaffing,” according to the post. “Some of the corrections officers are standing in solidarity with them.”
In total, about 1,200 inmates are incarcerated at the facility, according to department records.
The situation reverberates across prisons in the United States. In Texas prisons, for example, temperatures are estimated to rise regularly above 115F (46C), and have even been recorded to reach as high as 149F (65C), pushing individuals to the point of mental or physical breakdown, or even death.
Minnesota Public Radio reported in July that Stillwater was one of Minnesota’s nine prisons without facilitywide air conditioning.