Italy's Prisons Were Overcrowded. Then They Overheated.

The New York Times reported this week that Italy's prisons, already overcrowded, have been pushed further by summer heat, with temperatures in the country continuing to approach 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Inmates have been sleeping on concrete cell floors, the paper said, and even the guards have complained. The account is one of the few pieces of foreign coverage to treat the Italian prison system as a climate story rather than only a security one.

The detail that matters is the combination. Overcrowding is a structural condition the foreign press has documented for years; heat is a seasonal stress that turns a crowded cell into something closer to a hazard. The Times does not present the two as separate problems, and neither should the reader: a system already at capacity has no margin when the temperature rises.