Heatwaves expose overcrowding crisis in Europe’s ageing prisons

ORLEANS, France/ROME/BRUSSELS – On a day when temperatures were soaring past 37 deg C outside, the prisoner sat in his cell with wet towels around his window bars, trying to explain to the visiting politician how it felt to be locked up in France during a heatwave.Most days, 29-year-old Manu stayed on his bed, trying to move as little as possible. “You have to deal with it mentally,” he said in one of France’s newer jails, Orleans-Saran prison, which opened in 2014.Reuters accompanied that July visit and spoke to more than 40 people in France, Italy and Belgium – inmates, activists, prison directors, doctors, union representatives – many of whom described a crisis in jails where heatwaves in 2026 have exposed underlying problems with overcrowding and ageing facilities.France must ‘fight ag