In isolation, however, they weren’t permitted the luxury of cool, dry air.
Recently I was listening to a really incredible story by a man who was one of the Memphis Three. If you’re not familiar with this tale, it’s the extremely sad account of how three impoverished boys in Tennessee were wrongfully convicted of murdering several children. They were incarcerated for nearly 20 years without real evidence to back up their indictments before being released. The entire thing is extremely heartbreaking, until you realize how strong it made some of these wrongful prisoners. These tortured men were subjected to years of isolation as they sat in prison. What was most terrifying to me was the thought of being locked in a tiny cell with absolutely no human contact or even an AC system. Apparently, being an isolation means that you are also at the mercy of untreated indoor air. They put these poor souls in such terrible living conditions that there wasn’t so much as an air vent to supply its circulation or high-quality treated air. The rest of the prison population could at least count on an air conditioning system keeping them relatively cool and calm all day. In isolation, however, they weren’t permitted the luxury of cool, dry air. They didn’t even have the form of an air conditioning system to keep them company. There was no sense of time or space without the sun or any repetitive cycling of a central cooling system. The man said that these twenty years felt like a lifetime. I think I would feel the same if my AC unit broke down for a single day in my own household.