Heat wave concerns inmates’ families

Prisoners demand cooler conditions as temperatures reach deadly level

State prison officials are in emergency-response mode this week as a heat wave bears down on a large swath of Texas, rivaling the system that triggered the deaths of 10 inmates from heat stroke in 2011.

This time, the prison system will be better prepared, said a Texas Department of Criminal Justice official, acknowledging that a landmark settlement this year in a civil rights case over lifethreatening heat inside one prison unit played a significant role in changing attitudes.

Despite the assurances, advocates and inmates’ families voiced concerns about the continued lack of air in many of the state’s sweltering lock-ups, hinting at the need for costlier permanent solutions to avoid more heat-wave fatalities.

“We can’t continue to have these men and women suffer in these oven-like buildings,” said Jennifer Erschabek of the Texas Inmate Families Association, whose son is an inmate.

The National Weather Service last week issued excessive heat warnings in 59 counties across central and northeast Texas, where temperatures were expected to hover between 104 and 110 degrees through at least Monday.

Overall, just 29 Texas prisons provide air-conditioned living units, while another 75 facilities do not have it.

This year, state prisons adopted a more hands-on approach to mitigating the heat risk for inmates and employees, offering air-conditioned respite areas, cold showers, ice water, cooler meals and expanded access to electrolyte drinks, said TDCJ spokesman Jeremy Desel. On Friday, for the first time, the prison system established incident command centers at every unit to contend with the heat, the spokesman said.

“We just have to be inherently diligent,” Desel said. “It is an issue that we are extraordinarily cautious and careful about, and we will take all protections for our offenders and our staff.”

After a Houston federal judge last summer found that guards and administrators at a geriatric prison near Navasota had shown “deliberate indifference” to the serious risk of deadly heat, administrators began looking at ways to prevent harm to the most vulnerable inmates at state facilities.

Officials have started identifying inmates who have conditions or take medication that puts them at higher risk during heat waves, but the department has not begun large-scale transfers of heat-sensitive inmates to airconditioned facilities, Desel said.

And although emergency protocols may be prison policy, it’s another issue entirely whether officials really look out for inmates at risk of heat stroke, said Austin attorney Jeff Edwards. His firm brought several wrongful-death cases on behalf of the family members of inmates who died from heat exhaustion, as well as the federal class-action suit on behalf of 1,400 inmates at the Wallace Pack Unit.

“They made a lot of noise about making changes,” Edwards said. “My hunch is there might be even more awareness of their culpability if heat-related illnesses happen.”

‘Deadly heat’

Two key state lawmakers who oversee corrections practices echoed that sentiment, citing the Pack case as groundbreaking.

“One of the outcomes of the case was that TDCJ has become much more sensitive to heat conditions and also winter conditions,” said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the corrections committee in the state Senate. “I think they are being aggressive because they don’t want to be back in court.”

Many of the older concrete cell blocks were built without consideration for climate control in the living spaces, according to state Rep. James White, a Hillister Republican who chairs the House committee on corrections. Now, he said, he’s involved in discussions with state prison officials and others about a longterm plan to expand the air-conditioned spaces inside each of the prisons.

“I think we’re going to find a way to start moving toward that,” he said, noting that the cost to taxpayers is an important consideration. “I know it doesn’t mean a Carrier air conditioner in every cell block.”

Cooling experts gave vastly different estimates in the Pack case, saying the potential price tag for installing and maintaining permanent air conditioning in the dormitories would either be $450,000 or $22 million. However, there is no clear figure for how much it would cost to air condition living spaces at all units.

In the meantime, facilities rely on cooled respite areas set up in the prisons’ medical clinics, chapels, libraries and administration buildings. These are great in theory, but the reality is more chaotic, said Edwards, the lawyer in the Pack case.

“They’re functional for the odd person who needs relief, but it’s difficult to use them to get everyone away from deadly heat,” Edwards said.

Doug Smith, a senior policy analyst with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, previously served five years in Texas prisons — and he remembers the toll of the 2011 heat wave.

“Men died in the gym that summer,” he said, adding that he suspected some of their deaths were not recorded as heat-related.

Last month, a 58-year-old man briefly housed at one of the Garza Units in Beeville died at Hospital Galveston. Even though Desel attributed the death to several non-heat related natural causes, the incident caused deep concern among prisoners and their families.

‘Tin boxes’ holding inmates

Heat conditions and access to air vary from facility to facility. Smith served part of his sentence at a transfer facility, a metal-sided building with two industrial fans to cool about 100 men.

“You’re basically sitting in a tin box in 100-degree heat and 90 percent humidity,” he said.

Even at the units that do have better cooling systems, some advocates expressed concerns about whether they actually work well enough to ward off the ill effects of a heat wave.

“I feel extremely sorry for the guys housed in tin buildings because I know the insulation is inadequate, and the heat comes down and it’s unbearable,” said anti-death penalty activist Pat Hartwell, who keeps in regular contact with a number of men on death row, which has an “ill-repaired” cooling system.

“Some of the guys are slowly smothering because the vents do not work because of mechanical failure or guards closing them,” she added.

Erschabek, the inmate family advocate, echoed those concerns, citing sweltering conditions at the South Texas unit where her son is in prison. Though the unit has a cooling system, she said, it’s not clear that it’s working properly — or that it’s up to the task of combatting triple-digit Texas summers.

“The guards line the men up at the door to perform count because it’s so hot they don’t even want to go into the buildings,” she said. “I appreciate ice and maybe more showers and respite areas, but something has got to be done to where we’re not fighting this environmental issue that these buildings aren’t built to handle.”

The Pack inmates in Navasota now have temporary air conditioning in the wake of the lawsuit, and if funding comes through from the Legislature as expected, they will have permanent relief by the summer of 2020. Any long-term solution for inmates elsewhere, advocates said, could require additional funding from the legislature.

“Let’s figure out what it’s going to take to put air conditioning into these units so we stop killing people,” Smith said. “And maybe if didn’t have 145,000 people locked up, then maybe we could actually afford to do that.”