PHOENIX - Marcia Powell, a prostitute doing time behind bars, was temporarily moved one day last month to an outdoor holding pen with nothing but a chain-link-fence roof to shield her from the searing desert sun.
She lasted less than four hours.
Powell, 48, collapsed in the 108-degree heat and died at a hospital the next day, touching off a criminal investigation and bringing an abrupt end to a little-known practice in Arizona's prison system that inmate-rights activists found repellent.
Donna Leone Hamm, director of the local nonprofit Middle Ground Prison Reform, called the outdoor cages barbaric.
Arizona's 10 state prisons have 233 outdoor cells for temporarily holding inmates awaiting transfer to punishment wards, medical units, other prisons, or work assignments. All four sides and the roof of each cell are made of chain-link fence. Some have coverings that provide shade; others do not.
After Powell's collapse at the Perryville state prison outside Phoenix on May 19, corrections director Charles Ryan all but banned the use of outdoor detention cells. He said the cages will be used only in extraordinary circumstances, such as a prison riot or a brawl.
"The situation that Marcia Powell experienced will not occur again," Ryan said.
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