Heatwaves expose overcrowding crisis in Europe’s ageing prisons

On a day when temperatures were soaring past 37 degrees Celsius 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 opened in 2014....