Four nonprofits are advocating on behalf of people incarcerated in the Texas prison system after indoor temperatures have reached dangerously high levels amid scorching hot weather.
What's happening?
In May, Grist shared a story — first published in The Texas Tribune — detailing how triple-digit summer heat is creating what "amounts to cruel and unusual punishment" in Texas prisons.
On April 22, the nonprofit organizations filed a complaint against Texas Department of Criminal Justice executive director Bryan Collier for conditions in the state's prisons, joining a lawsuit filed in 2023 after an inmate suffered a medical crisis while being kept in 110-degree heat. The new complaint advocates for all inmates incarcerated in the Lone Star State.
According to the report, Texas requires county jails to be 85 degrees Fahrenheit or cooler, but some prison cells have exceeded 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Dozens of inmates have died, resulting in millions of dollars of wrongful death and civil rights lawsuits.
"What is truly infuriating is the failure to acknowledge that everyone in the system — all 130,000 prisoners — are at direct risk of being impacted by something that has a simple solution that has been around since the 1930s, and that is air conditioning," attorney Jeff Edwards, who worked on a 2014 prisoner civil rights case that ended with a settlement, told reporters, per Grist.
Why is this important?
As attorney Erica Grossman, who is part of the legal team representing the plaintiffs, noted in the report, the inhumane situation could have been prevented with preparation.
"This isn't an unpredictable event," Grossman said. "It gets hot every summer, and much like every other building in Texas — including buildings that have animals — we cool the building."
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded, and all of the 10 warmest years have taken place over the past decade. Texas was no exception, per the Tribune, experiencing its second-hottest documented summer.
As NASA explains, though it has been natural for Earth's climate to fluctuate slowly over time, temperatures are rising at an "unprecedented" pace.
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that human activities are to blame for the dangerous situation, with the burning of dirty fuels, including gas, oil, and coal, the primary culprit releasing excess heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. Toxic pollution from these fuels is also responsible for millions of premature deaths every year, per the World Health Organization.
What's being done about conditions in Texas prisons?
TDCJ spokesperson Amanda Hernandez would not comment on the pending lawsuit but said that the agency has already been examining its protocols during extreme heat and adding the cooling systems (though advocates have argued that the state has failed to provide adequate funding for air conditioning even though it has the capacity to do so, per Grist).
"Each year we've been working to add cool beds, and we'll continue to do so," Hernandez said, adding that "enhanced heating protocols" include the provision of ice water from April through October. TDCJ also says it screens prisoners for medical conditions that may make them more susceptible to heat-related illnesses and places them in priority housing, among other things.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit may lead to better conditions for those incarcerated in the state's system as well as increased awareness about advocating for humane care in prisons or more climate-resilient construction for the buildings amid the challenges of a warming planet.
For example, Edwards' 2014 case resulted in TDCJ's approving an air conditioning installation at one of its units after nearly 20 Texas inmates died from heat stroke over the course of two decades, per Grist.
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