Texas heat has killed prisoners and cost the state millions in wrongful death and civil rights lawsuits. Prison rights advocates hope a budget surplus next year will finally push lawmakers to invest in air conditioning. TexasNews
also enacted new policies
The Ferguson Unit, a notoriously hot prison in East Texas, has no air conditioning for any prisoner housing areas, including solitary confinement.But prisoners and their supporters regularly say throughout the system that the policies aren’t consistently followed, and they believe most illnesses aren’t recorded. It strikes them that more heat-related illnesses are reported among staff than inmates since prison workers get to go home each day.
During his first nine years in prison, serving a 40-year sentence for aggravated robbery, Segovia was in an air-conditioned cell at the Michael Unit, about 90 miles north of his new prison in Midway. When he learned he was being moved to Ferguson, a notoriously stifling prison, he thought at first other men were exaggerating. He’d worked in construction and warehouses in Texas — he knew heat.
“I fainted four times in my cell and no reports were filed and I received no medical attention,” one prisoner at the Scott Unit in Brazoria County wrote to researchers.
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