HOUSTON (CN) – Texas prison officials have been deliberately indifferent to the hazards of sweltering summer heat in a lockup near Houston, a federal judge ruled, ordering the state to reduce the temperature in inmate housing areas to 88 degrees Fahrenheit.
Over the past two decades, 23 Texas inmates have died from heat-related illness, but the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has never seriously considered installing air conditioning in prisons that were not built with air conditioning, maintaining that it would be too expensive, according to court records and testimony.
The Wallace Pack Unit is a minimum-security prison in Navasota, 70 miles northwest of Houston. It is one of 109 state prisons in Texas. It houses about 1,450 male inmates serving sentences for nonviolent crimes, many of whom are disabled, sick and elderly, and take drugs that make them more susceptible to heat stroke.
Seven Pack Unit inmates sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, its former executive director Brad Livingston and Pack Unit Warden Roberto Herrera in June 2014, seeking class certification and an injunction forcing prison officials to “maintain a heat index of 88 degrees or lower inside each of the Pack Unit’s housing areas.”
U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison certified a class action of all current and future Pack Unit inmates in June 2016 and two subclasses for disabled and heat-sensitive prisoners.
Finding that measures Texas has taken to mitigate the risk of heat stroke for inmates in the Pack Unit, where the heat index is often more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Ellison issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday, ordering Texas to lower the heat index in housing areas for heat-sensitive inmates to no more than 88 degrees.
But Ellison stopped short of ordering Texas to install air conditioning in Pack Unit inmates’ dorms. Rather, he urged prison officials to better utilize air-conditioned areas in the prison.
The prison’s infirmary, library and classrooms, barbershop, hallways, officer dining room and administrative offices are air conditioned.
“Defendants may reconfigure areas that are currently air conditioned to accommodate the heat sensitive, or move them to other facilities in Texas,” the 101-page order states.
Texas argued in hearings that a respite program it implemented in 2015, in which inmates can ask guards at any time for access to one of the prison’s air-conditioned areas and stay as long as they want to cool down, has been key in reducing the number of heat-related illnesses.
No heat deaths have been reported at the Pack Unit and the latest year that Texas inmates succumbed to excess heat was 2012, when two prisoners died.
But Ellison found the Pack Unit’s respite areas aren’t big enough to accommodate many prisoners and that both the prison staff and inmates are unaware of, or confused about, the rules for respite areas.
Plaintiff Richard King, 71, suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, and takes two medications that interfere with his body’s ability to cool down, according to the case record.
He has been incarcerated at the Pack Unit for six years. He testified that in the summer he finds it hard to function, as he sweats profusely, becomes lethargic and loses his appetite.