Imagine yourself in an oven. Now imagine the heat is cranked up to 100 degrees. That might sound scary, but don’t panic. I’m going to give you two fans that you can use inside the oven, which will circulate the hot air that already exists.
The heat that we inmates in Texas prisons have to endure amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. A July 2022 Texas A&M University report found that Texas prisons regularly reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit. In one case, a prison unit even reached 149 degrees. According to the report, only 30% of Texas prison living areas have air conditioning, well below the 87% of American households that have in-home cooling systems.
An analysis by The Intercept found that 21 prisons in Texas lack air conditioning.
In the Lone Star state, it seems that once you commit a crime, you are not only incarcerated for it, but also subjected to unbearable and sickening weather that’s easily avoidable with proper air conditioning. Without it, serious health concerns can occur. Heat exhaustion can be felt at 80 degrees, and you can be at risk for heat stroke when temperatures start to reach 91 degrees.
People in Texas prisons have fought this problem through lawsuits for years, and according to the Texas A&M report, there have been at least 23 heat-related deaths and many more injuries since 1998. One of the report authors told the Texas House Appropriations Committee that the impact of heat is “wildly underestimated.”
But instead of spending money to cool prisons and save lives, the state has spent millions of dollars on court cases fighting air conditioning, according to The Texas Tribune.
There are some devices and techniques used in prisons to help cool us down, but I don’t believe any of these tactics are very effective. One device is a blower, which is built into the walls. They are supposed to blow out hot air, but temperatures in our prison remain hot throughout the day. Even when it cools down late at night, it’s still around 88 degrees inside.
In prison, blow dryers are often used to cook food. You take a bag, and place food inside. Then you make a hole in the top of the bag and you place the blow dryer inside. The heated air from the blow dryer fries the food.
Now think about that same process, but slightly altered. Place 102 women in metal cubicles with concrete floors. There is no air conditioning in our dorms. The dorm is now our cooking bag.
We have a couple ways to try to cool down. You can walk around in wet clothes, but this gets tiresome because it’s so hot that your clothes dry every 20 minutes. You can wet your concrete floor with cold water, but that won’t cool the floor down. You just wind up with warm water on your floor.
There are designated “respite” areas with air conditioning, including the school building, the chapel and the visitation area, where many prison staff work.
The opportunity to cool down in an air conditioned space is supposed to be allowed 24/7, but officers in Texas prisons have used this as a retaliatory weapon. Officers deny inmates respite or limit the time they are allowed to have respite.
Sometimes the air conditioning in a respire space is broken for long periods. Instead, a fan will be used to replace air conditioning. That means you have nowhere to go for relief.
There was a bill introduced in the Texas legislature 2021 to install air conditioning in Texas prisons. It passed the House, but died in the Senate. That means we have to continue to endure the heat and hope for a cooler forecast.
(Additional reporting by PJP)
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.