UnSplash / Taylor Brandon
Last summer, inmates posted TikToks videos of themselves soaking their bedsheets in toilet water to cool off.
Four nonprofit prisoner-rights groups filed a complaint Monday in an Austin federal court alleging that Texas prisons’ widespread lack of air conditioning violates the constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The organizations joined a lawsuit filed last summer by Bernie Tiede, an inmate who argues he suffered an acute medical crisis after being housed in a Huntsville cell where temperatures exceeded 110 degrees. Tiede, a convicted murderer who served as inspiration for the 2011 film Bernie, was moved to an air-conditioned cell in the wake of a court order but could be forced back into the un-air conditioned portion of the prison in the future, he argues in his suit.
The advocacy groups amended the suit to include every inmate incarcerated in a TDJC facility as a plaintiff. The document names Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDJC) executive director Bryan Collier as a defendant.
Legally, Texas prisons are required to be kept at or below 85 degrees. However, during last summer’s blazing heat, prisoners, their families and advocates argued that TDJC turned a blind eye to the stifling conditions, as reported by the Current. Indeed, inmates posted TikTok videos last summer showing themselves soaking bedsheets in their toilets so they could keep cool as they baked in their cells.
“The public arena nationwide is focusing on the ongoing horrendous conditions of aging prisons, especially in hot Texas, where individuals under state custody are being kept in horrendous horrible conditions with inside temperatures reaching triple digits,” Tiede’s suit maintains.
Although TDJC officials maintain there hasn’t been a heat-related death in state prisons since 2012, a Texas Tribune analysis from last year suggests heat played a role in at least 41 deaths recorded in state-run lockups.
“Roughly 70% of prisons in the TDJC system house inmates without air conditioning,” the lawsuit states. “As a result, TDJC prisoners have died in the past, and current prisoners are confronted with ongoing, unacceptable risks to their health and well-being.”
Tiede’s story isn’t unique, according to Texas prisoners and their families.
In August, Tona Southards-Naranjo testified in front of the TDJC meeting that she believed that her son, Jon, who was also incarcerated at the Huntsville Unit, died of a heat-related illness last year.
“You see, ladies and gentlemen of the board, I myself turned my son in [out of] tough love,” Southards-Naranjo told the TDJC. “I believe in doing so that my son would be rehabilitated, he would pay his debt to society, and he would come home a different man. Two of those things did not happen. He was not rehabilitated, and he did come home a different young man — a dead one.”
During the last legislative session, the Texas House proposed spending $545 million to install air conditioning in TDJC facilities. However, that bill died in the Senate, whose agenda is controlled by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican hardliner.
“It’s pretty obvious that it’s not a priority [in Austin],” Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, told the Current at the time. “I think what it will take for it to pass the legislature is for them to recognize the humanity of everybody who both lives and works at those facilities.”
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