As if being imprisoned wasn’t bad enough, a new lawsuit from a former Washington inmate alleges there’s another threat lurking in Washington’s correctional facilities: the showers.

Robert Morris was imprisoned at the Correctional Treatment Facility, a building  located next to the D.C. Jail that’s run by the private Corrections Corporation of America, on Sept. 20, 2012. When he got in the shower, he alleged got a surprise: According to his lawsuit, the temperature spiked.

“There was a sudden, very rapid, and quite extreme temperature change and it burned him in the genital area,” says Geoffrey D. Allen, Morris’s attorney. The lawsuit alleges that Corrections Corporation of America employees already knew about the showers’ tendency to shoot out scalding water, which Allen likens to the changes in temperature when multiple showers in one house are turned on, but much worse.

In a lawsuit filed in Superior Court in January, Morris sued the Corrections Corporation of America for $1 million for the injuries he suffered in the shower. The company declined to comment on the case, saying in a statement that inmate safety at the CTF is a top priority.

Allen, who wasn’t sure what his client was imprisoned for, says Morris didn’t suffer permanent damage from the shower’s alleged burst on his most sensitive areas. “It was certainly uncomfortable, as you can imagine,” Allen says.

Shower photo by Shutterstock.