Behind the walls of America's prisons

Heather Ann Thompson, Ph.D., is a native Detroiter and historian on the faculty of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the departments of Afro-American and African Studies, History, and the Residential College. She is the author of the book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy. The severe heat in Texas prisons is linked to several deaths and lawsuits.  A new court order is forcing authorities to move over 1 thousand Texas prisoners to cooler cells, saying the inmates need air conditioning.  In fact, the judge ruled that temperatures in some of the prisons are unconstitutional.   Do prisoners deserve the same human and constitutional rights as those of us that are outside of prison? Heather Ann Thompson explains some issues surrounding the US prison system and why we should know more about what is going on behind prison walls.