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Inside Lopez, there is air-conditioning in the hallways, but not in the dormitories that house inmates. But it has yet to secure the funding from the Legislature. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees the state’s 98 correctional facilities and its roughly 120,000 inmates, has a plan to completely air-condition prisons by the end of the decade at a cost of $1.1 billion. A bill he introduced in 2021 passed the Texas House of Representatives but died in the Senate both chambers are controlled by Republicans. He toured the prison ahead of the next legislative session, with plans to introduce new legislation on prison air-conditioning. “We can do better,” said State Representative Terry Canales, a Democrat whose district includes the Lopez jail. Ismael Carrillo Gomez’s hands turned red as a result of the extreme heat in the jail. The New York Times was granted access to the Lopez jail this month during a state lawmaker’s fact-finding tour, a rare look inside a system that normally is closed to visitors. But that standard does not apply to state-run prisons.Īs a result, only one out of every three prisons in Texas is fully air-conditioned. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards, a state agency, requires that all county jails keep the temperature from 65 to 85 degrees. However, the state does require some inmates to have air-conditioning: those housed in jails run by the counties, which often house inmates who are awaiting trial.
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There has been little political momentum in the state’s conservative Legislature to spend tax dollars on air-conditioning for inmates. This year, 12 inmates and 21 employees have suffered heat-related illnesses, prison officials said, although some inmates’ family members and supporters said they believed the number of heat-related illnesses was higher.Īlthough the Texas prison system has undergone court-mandated reforms, new prisons have not received extra funding for air-conditioning, prison officials said. The last documented prison death was in 2012. Since 2000, there have been at least 17 heat-related deaths in Texas prisons, including 10 during a heat wave in 2011, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The area around the Lopez State Jail in Edinburg experienced 48 days of 100 degrees or above, according to the state climatologist. The state is coming off its second hottest summer on record, with an average daily temperature of 97.4 degrees. Texas, one of at least 13 states without fully air-conditioned housing in its prison systems, has faced costly lawsuits and scathing criticism for failing to provide its inmates with relief from withering indoor temperatures at a time when lingering heat waves have become an ever-more-relentless feature of Texas summers. A “cooling towel” wrapped around the neck of a perspiring inmate.