Brutal Heat and Humidity is Killing Many People Incarcerated in US Prisons

Houston, we have a problem. A major problem with US prisons…

Please donate at http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos as I join the dots on abrupt climate system mayhem.

It’s torture’: brutal heat broils Texas prisons, killing dozens of inmates:
Legal action aims to force criminal justice department to air condition prisons, where 85,000 are at risk of heat illnesses
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/09/texas-heat-prisons-lawsuit

Record-setting Texas heat sends hundreds of people to emergency rooms:
Emergency medical providers respond to heat-related illnesses as extreme temperatures become more frequent and prolonged
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/28/record-setting-texas-heat-sends-hundreds-emergency-rooms

An inmate’s body temp was 107.5 when he died. The state of Texas says heat did not kill him.
https://www.tpr.org/news/2024-07-29/an-inmates-body-temp-was-107-5-when-he-died-the-state-of-texas-says-heat-did-not-kill-him

Too much heat, not enough funding: State of Texas defends lack of prison A/C in federal court:
The state of Texas is being sued over the lack of air conditioning in its prisons. In federal court, inmates detailed the extreme measures they’ve taken to get out of the heat.
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/texas-prison-heat-ac-court-hearing-lawsuit/

Deliberate Indifference’: Court Rulings Challenge Extreme Heat Conditions in Prisons:
“If it’s 103 outside, it may be 107 to -8 inside of your cell,” said a man who worked in the fields while imprisoned in Texas.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/08/10/texas-heat-louisiana-prison

‘Concrete Coffins’: Surviving Extreme Heat Behind Bars: Record temperatures in much of the U.S. threatening more people in prisons.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/07/22/texas-heat-prison-louisiana

Peer-reviewed paper:
Provision of Air Conditioning and Heat-Related Mortality in Texas Prisons
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2798097

Why Record Heat Can Be Deadlier in Prisons
Corrections officials across most of the nation have not prepared for warmer summers and record heat waves.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/09/10/why-record-heat-can-be-deadlier-in-prisons

“Cooking Them to Death”:
The Lethal Toll of Hot Prisons
AS THE CLIMATE CHANGES, INMATES WITHOUT AIR-CONDITIONING HAVE NO ESCAPE FROM EXTREME HEAT.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/10/11/cooking-them-to-death-the-lethal-toll-of-hot-prisons

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS AUSTIN DIVISION
Amended Complaint
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25033504-4_22-tdcj-first-amended-complaint

INTRODUCTION
1. Texas prisoners are being cooked to death. Last summer alone, many people died and hundreds more suffered serious heat-related illnesses because of the sweltering temperatures in Texas’s prisons.

1. To simply survive, people housed in Texas prisons have had to flood their toilets and lie down in the water on the cell floor to try to cool their bodies.

2. The overwhelming majority of prisons (roughly 70%) in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (“TDCJ”) system lack air conditioning in the inmate housing units. As a result, approximately 85,000 of the roughly 130,000 TDCJ inmates currently lack air conditioning in their living areas.

3. During the summer months, those units routinely reach 100o Fahrenheit or higher. For many years now, the extreme heat has wreaked havoc on Texas’s prisons, coinciding with a dramatic increase in illnesses and deaths. And as temperatures increase with global climate change, the problem is only getting worse. Last summer was the second hottest on record in Texas, with some TDCJ units reaching an astonishing 149o Fahrenheit.

4. A U.S. Congressman for Texas put it as plainly as one can: “Being in a 115-degree prison is the definition of cruel and unusual punishment.”3

5. This problem is not new. Experts have identified 271 deaths in Texas prisons between 2001 and 2019 that can be attributed to extreme heat exposure. In other words, extreme heat in Texas’s unairconditioned prisons caused or contributed to an average of 14 deaths per year from 2001 to 2019.4

Please donate at http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos as I join the dots on abrupt climate system mayhem.