Government (American & State): Magazines & Newspapers - Texas Prisons and AC

Over the next few weeks, the tone of Wilson's emails darkened. By late June the heat was rising, and he reckoned it felt like 115F (46C) in his cell. "I can withstand the heat," he said, "but passing out water only once a day as it gets hotter isn't cool."

A legal battle over a lack of air conditioning in Texas prisons is bringing together advocates on the issue and one current inmate who says his health is being endangered by the state’s hot prisons — the former mortician whose murder case inspired the movie “Bernie.”

During the year Justin Phillips spent in an unair-conditioned segregation cell at the Coffield Unit, a state prison near Palestine, Texas, the soaring temperatures took a toll. All but eight days of June 2018 saw the heat index rise above 110 degrees.

M ARCH 20TH marks the official start of spring in the northern hemisphere. Rising temperatures spell hard times for plenty of American prisoners. At least 14 states lack universal air conditioning in their prisons, including many in the South. Florida offers air-conditioned housing units in only 40% of its state-run correctional institutions; Texas provides it in only 30%.

I have lived without air conditioning in this cell for the past seven summers. I wasn’t even allowed to shade my window from the sun. On a hot day in July, cells regularly reached 110 degrees.

In Texas, arguments will be heard Tuesday in a federal lawsuit that describes triple-digit highs inside some state prison cells in the summer. Advocates accuse officials of downplaying the number of deaths linked to excessive heat. One case last August involved a 32-year-old man with a history of epilepsy and mental illness, whose core body temperature was 107.5 degrees when he was found unresponsive in his cell.

Describing Texas prisons as so hot that inmates would cool off by splashing themselves with toilet water or faking suicide attempts to get moved to cooler medical areas, advocates on Tuesday asked a federal judge to declare the state prison system's lack of air conditioning as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

Robert Allen Webb, a 50-year-old developmentally disabled man who suffered from a medical condition that made him susceptible to heatstroke, was supposed to be serving a short sentence in a Texas prison for drunken driving. But in August 2011, as Texas baked in one of its worst heat waves ever, it became a death sentence inside an East Texas prison.

Four scorching summers ago, convict Eugene Blackmon and dozens of other prisoners baked inside a South Texas prison, in temperatures that an expert later calculated at 134 degrees, Blackmon alleges in a lawsuit.

Texas was among the hottest places on Earth last week as a heat wave brought misery from Mexico to Florida. While residents across the region struggled to stay cool, the extreme heat took a particularly severe toll on those who could least protect themselves, particularly incarcerated people.

There is a large body of epidemiologic evidence that heat is associated with increased risk of mortality. One of the most effective strategies to mitigate the effects of heat is through air conditioning (AC); Texas regulates the internal temperature of jails to stay between 65 and 85 °F degrees, but these same standards do not apply to state and private prisons."

An inmate for nearly 16 years, Mr. Martire was expecting to be released in a few weeks. But it was so hot that day, he recalled, that he wondered if he would make it that long. He was covered in sweat and felt so lightheaded that he had to brace himself against a wall. At some point, he passed out.

The lawsuit, filed by Austin lawyer Jeff Edwards, asks that the temperature at Wallace Pack Unit in Navasota be cooled to at least 88 degrees at all times, not for comfort, but for safety reasons, the Austin American Statesman reported.

In the brutal heat of summer, many Texans flee to shopping malls, movie theaters and other air-conditioned havens to keep cool. But for one segment of the population, there is literally no escape from triple-digit temperatures: state prison inmates.

Dangerous summer temperatures inside Texas prisons violate inmates' human rights and the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, said a report released Tuesday by the University of Texas Human Rights Clinic.