Elizabeth Nomura found herself once again in the oppressive heat of Chowchilla, California, that she endured while incarcerated at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). But this time, on Aug. 19, she was protesting outside the prison on behalf of the over 1,000 women still inside. 

“I spent all them years in that prison, so being back on a summer day of Chowchilla heat brought all the memory back of being stuck in those rooms all of those summers,” Nomura said. 

Alongside fellow formerly incarcerated advocate Sol Mercado, Nomura co-led the demonstration outside of CCWF to call attention to conditions at the facility and its treatment of incarcerated women, who have recently endured a string of traumatic events. 

Nomura organizes with the abolitionist organization California Coalition of Women’s Prisoners, and Mercado is a reentry coordinator at Planting Justice, an organization aimed at empowering people impacted by mass incarceration with skills to work toward food sovereignty. They are a part of a growing movement of formerly incarcerated women from across California, Nevada, Mexico, and Tonga working to shed light on the plight of women who are still inside—including those dealing with deadly conditions and sexual violence.  

‘We can’t breathe’

In recent years, rising temperatures have created deadly conditions for imprisoned people across the country, but especially those in the states of Texas, Florida, California, and Pennsylvania, where the majority of prisons lack air conditioning. 

In Chowchilla, extremely high temperatures have led those incarcerated in CCWF to experience symptoms of heat exhaustion, and in the case of Adrienne Boulware, the loss of life. The 47-year-old, affectionately known as “Twin” amongst her friends, had been incarcerated at CCWF since 2015. According to her daughter, Boulware had complained about the impact of summer heat on her physical health for years. 

On July 4, as temperatures in Chowchilla creeped up to 109 degrees, Boulware waited outside in CCWF’s yard to receive medication. In an interview with The Real News Network, Nomura said prison guards only gave Boulware a single cup of water as she waited in the desert heat. Once inside her unit, Boulware showered and shortly after became unresponsive, exhibiting signs of heat exhaustion that included shaking limbs. After her unit-mates called for help, Boulware was transferred to the hospital, where on July 6, she died. With her release scheduled for February 2025, Boulware was less than a year away from being able to return home. 

According to the Sacramento Bee, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) attributed Boulware’s death to an “ongoing, not heat-related medical condition,” but her family is raising money for an autopsy and to cover funeral costs. Formerly incarcerated advocates are confident that Boulward’s untimely passing was due to heat conditions, and they lifted up her story at the Aug. 19 demonstration and demanded better conditions for women at CCWF.

According to the CDCR’s “extreme heat prevention and response” protocol, each prison in California has a heat plan coordinator tasked with monitoring temperatures inside and outside the facility and with keeping track of the number of incarcerated patients with heat-related symptoms. During extreme heat situations, the response plan outlines a number of required actions, including opening housing unit cell windows, allowing additional access to showers, and increasing access to water stations, fans, ice, and portable cooling units.

But according to Nomura, these plans do not reflect the practices employed by the prison, particularly during periods of lockdown when CCWF is understaffed and women are confined to their rooms. In the days following Boulware’s passing, the facility was put on lockdown. 

“They were on a multiple day lockdown for lack of staff, and those temperatures were going up and down from 111 to 113 [and] there was [only] one working ice machine,” Nomura said. “So they [had] no access to ice water, locked in, temperatures in the rooms were going above 90 degrees, and we were getting calls early Saturday morning of people feeling sick. They were crying out for help [and saying] ‘We can’t breathe’ [because] the swamp cooler engines were running so hot that they were blowing out hot air into the rooms, turning the rooms into ovens and then, ultimately, into dead chambers.”  

Mercado also notes that CCWF staff tend to record temperatures from the coolest parts of the facility—such as the hallways—instead of end rooms that retain the most heat. She knows this from firsthand experience; she was incarcerated in an endroom unit at CCWF.

“I lived in an end room for years, and we even tried to cover the windows to prevent the heat from coming in but they can write you up for that,” Mercado said. “Or if you take too many showers so you could cool down, they trip on that too.” 

Reporting from the Modesto Bee last year revealed the inadequacies within CCWF’s heat management protocols, including the facility’s reliance on evaporative coolers, also known as “swamp coolers,” that often leak and break. 

Those present at the Aug. 19 demonstration called for the installation of air conditioning in place of the current swamp cooler system, cold water dispensing units in all housing and work areas, and for the provision of state-issued fans and cooling rags during the summer. 

‘I feel like I’m living with my abuser’

The  demonstration also called attention to an earlier lockdown and the ensuing violence that occurred in its wake. 

On the morning of Aug. 2, Nomura and Mercado said they received calls from women at CCWF, detailing how guards seized, searched, and largely threw away the belongings of 158 women detained in unit 513 due to reports of contraband. Women in the unit were also allegedly herded into the dining hall, where they were left in extreme heat due to the absence of ventilation. When they complained of the conditions, the women were reportedly attacked by over 30 officers. 

Mercado said that according to women detained inside other units at CCWF, the attack “sounded like a war zone.” 

Women said guards handcuffed them, pepper sprayed them, hit them with multiple rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets, and even hurled epithets at them. In the weeks since the lockdown, Nomura and Mercado say that unit 513 residents are still reeling from the trauma of the attacks. The activists describe it as a kind of compounded trauma or “double punishment,” given that the majority of women in CCWF—much like most women detained nationwide—are survivors of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse.  

“[Officers] were talking down on them, they were beating them,” Mercado said. “I have spoken with a few people and they’re like, ‘How do they want us to be held accountable when they can’t even be held accountable for their own crimes? I feel like I’m living with my abuser.’” 

The California Model 

The tragic events that animated the recent demonstration in Chowchilla come amidst highly publicized changes within CDCR via a campaign touted as the “California Model.” Implemented last year by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the campaign is an effort to rebrand incarceration to  build “safer communities through rehabilitation, education, restorative justice, and reentry.” 

The model, inspired largely by the Scandinavian prison system, is built around four pillars: dynamic security, or improved relationships between staff and incarcerated people through activities and “positive and respectful communication;” normalization, or making the facility more closely resemble the world outside through the incorporation of art and music; peer mentorship between incarcerated people; and becoming a “trauma informed organization.” CDCR promotes the model through town halls, a series of promotional videos, and has even changed the names of certain facilities and agencies. For example, the California Youth Authority is now the Division of Juvenile Justice. 

But advocates argue that this rebranding does not denote any meaningful culture change and, in many ways, allows the department to evade criticism. 

“Behind the scenes, there’s a lot of harm outside of these events,” Nomura said. “A lot of harm outside of the invitations to news agencies to come and do these stories on the puppy program or this program or that [CCWF] program. There’s harm [being] done: sexual assaults, continued apathy and neglect around medical care, and let’s not forget the heat-related crisis that led to the untimely death—nothing short of murder—of Adrienne ‘Twin’ Boulware.”