A Texas Prison Reached 149 Degrees This Summer
This feels like cruel and unusual punishment.
I know some folks out there reading this are saying, well if they don't like it, they shouldn't have committed those crimes. I do not think prison should be a pleasant experience, but people should be serving their time and not being tortured. Texas A&M's Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center just shared a survey they conducted earlier this month.
It goes into detail on what conditions these prisoners are dealing with during these brutal Texas summers. Texas is one of those states that does not require prisons to have air conditioning. According to an article from the Texas Tribune last year, Texas aims to have all of their prisons to have air conditioning by 2029. That is dependent on lawmakers approving funds to go to that by then.
In the meantime with these brutal temperatures almost 75% of Texas prisons just deal with these brutal temperatures. The average temperature inside of the units for the first month of July was 91.4 degrees. The highest a unit did reach was 149 degrees according to the Texas A&M survey.
The survey also says at least 23 documented heat-related deaths of incarcerated people have also been recorded by the TDCJ since 1998. I'm not saying these folks should be chilling at 70 degrees all day long, but some relief every now and then goes a long way.
I encourage you to read this survey because it is pretty eye opening to me on what some of these folks are dealing with.