Texas had the chance to provide air conditioning in state prisons, Senators showed they did not care

Texas had the chance to provide air conditioning in prisons.

Senators didn’t care We’ve all been there: sitting in a hot car in July for a bit too long, or awakening one August morning to find our air conditioning unit broken.

Texas heat can be debilitating.

Most people can find temporary respite in a cool movie theater, a hotel room, or in the hopes an HVAC repair person will come as quickly as possible.

But imagine being incarcerated or working in a Texas prison; 70% of prisons don’t have air conditioning.

The summer months in Texas are brutal even with AC, without it the heat is stifling, dangerous, and a symptom of a greater illness in the Texas Legislature: Not even a Senate with a Republican majority cares for prisoners or workers enough to reprieve prisons from the heat.

This year, the House passed House Bill 1708, a proposal that would have required prisons to be kept between 65 and 85 degrees, already a requirement of county jails for nearly 30 years.

The House’s proposal would have spent $225.9 million to cool 16 prisons by 2025. The bill had bipartisan support and no one opposed the bill — former prisoners, prison guards, and advocacy groups supported it–but the bill just died in committee, the legislative purgatory where laziness and complacency thrive.

That was just one of four bills that the Texas House proposed to deal with heat in Texas prisons.

None of them passed in the Senate. The results were similar in 2021.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice did receive $85 million for “deferred maintenance” from the Legislature this session and the department told KXAN-TV in Austin “a substantial amount of that will go to cool beds.”

The Texas House also approved $545 million in the biennial budget for AC in department facilities, but the Senate removed it.

According to a report from the Texas A&M University Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center, “units regularly reach extreme temperatures of over 110 degrees, with at least one unit recording a high of 149 degrees on the heat index, putting incarcerated people and prison staff at risk for illness and even death.”

The same report said the Texas heat has caused prisoners to die and a lack of air conditioning contributes to significant staff shortages, not to mention taxpayer dollars fighting wrongful death and civil rights lawsuits.

Excessive heat in prison cells, due to lack of air conditioning, causes a number of problems.

Hot jail cells don’t just make life miserable for inmates.

Heat can make working at a prison miserable, even untenable.

In 2021, the Department of Criminal Justice reported a correctional officer turnover rate of over 40%. In 2022, it reported 8,000 open officer positions.

The lack of humane working conditions plays a significant role.

The sweltering heat inside prison walls contributes to medical emergencies and even violence.

Beyond all those reasons– and those are compelling– providing air conditioning to incarcerated inmates simply seems like the right thing to do in a state that boasts summer months that reach 100plus degrees.

Even inmates deserve to be treated with dignity.

Workers deserve relief. Air conditioning provides that.

Shame on a Texas Legislature which enjoys a Republican majority–often the party of faith and family values –that did not care enough about the criminals or employees in state prisons to offer any of them a small respite from these sweltering pressure cookers.