Since 70% of Texas prisons are not fully air conditioned, prison staffers resort to “heat mitigation efforts.' But the heat can still be deadly for those locked up.
A few years ago, Benny Hernandez penned a dispatch from what reads like hell on Earth."Prisoners look upon the summer months in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice with dread and trepidation," he wrote."For one is acutely aware that one may not survive another summer. Many do not. The deadly heat in Texas prisons is killing us."
His brief yet searing story also notes that the extra fans “simply circulate hot air” when the temperature exceeds 95 degrees, which it often does in West Texas. “It routinely feels,” he wrote, “as if one’s sitting in a convection oven being slowly cooked alive.” The report is the result of nearly three years of research by Texas Prison Community Advocates and the Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center at Texas A&M University, where Purdum works. Its findings, which were shared with the Texas House Appropriations Committee on July 12, paint a painful portrait of life behind bars during summer months.
State prison officials have often pushed back against claims that their facilities are unsafe, even going so far as to contest the death of a man who reportedly died from hyperthermia while incarcerated in 2018.
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