TEXAS — A federal judge recently ordered the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to install air conditioning in all its facilities by the end of 2029. This has been met with praise from advocates and those who have been incarcerated. However, the department disagrees with the judge’s ruling.
Texas is known for its hot summers, which is why there has long been a call for all TDCJ facilities to have AC.
Amite Dominick, the founder and president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, has been advocating for this for years. She explained to Spectrum News the evidence her organization presented as a plaintiff in a lawsuit over a lack of air conditioning in Texas prisons.
“Our study done with Dr. Carlee Purdum, looking at the surveys of incarcerated individuals and the heat and mortality work that we did with Dr. Julie Skarha, and those pieces became foundational pieces of the lawsuit,” Dominick said. “We’d also done other things like gathering temperature logs and other research items.”
Recently, federal Judge Robert Pitman sided with the plaintiffs, writing in his ruling, “TDCJ’s un-air-conditioned prisons violate the Eighth Amendment,” which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
Spectrum News reached out to TDCJ. The department said in part: “The Texas Department of Criminal Justice respectfully disagrees with the Court’s ruling that TDCJ is deliberately indifferent, and will be appealing the decision.”
“Bring it on,” said Jennifer Toon, the executive director of Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance. “We believe in the Constitution, and we believe that our court system is going to honor the Constitution.”
Lioness is another plaintiff in the lawsuit. Toon was formerly incarcerated and has experienced hot days in Texas state prisons without AC.
“The ways that we tried to cool ourselves off and kind of mitigate harm, some of us successfully, others not, was to put on wet clothes, was to lay underneath our bunks, if we were in a cubicle that we could get under our bunk, sit in front of a fan in wet clothes,” Toon said.
It’s testimonies like this that contributed to Pitman’s decision.
Questions about how TDCJ will install AC into all its facilities in the timeframe laid out in the ruling have been raised, with the judge writing in his opinion that it’s “entirely achievable.”
“When we look at the conditions of some of the buildings, there are some additional factors that are coming up when it comes to retrofitting some of the older buildings with AC units,” said Democratic state Rep. Venton Jones of Dallas.
Jones is vice chair of the Texas House Committee on Corrections and says this issue will be a priority in the next legislative session, including appropriating the funds for it. TDCJ has estimated that installing AC in all its facilities could cost around $1.5 billion.
“As it relates to our funding, Texas definitely has the funds to be able to do this, and we will determine that during the appropriations process,” Jones said.
“I know my work’s not done yet,” Dominick said. “I know that I have to gear up for next legislative session. So, it was this mixed bag of, ‘Do we have time to celebrate before we pack our bags for the next round?’”
Source: spectrumlocalnews.com
