The Militant - May 19, 2014 -- Prison authorities in Texas let inmates die from stifling heat

Vol. 78/No. 19 May 19, 2014

Prison authorities in Texas let
inmates die from stifling heat

BY STEVE WARSHELL
HOUSTON — Texas prison authorities’ indifference toward suffocating heat is killing inmates, according to a report by the University of Texas Law School’s Human Rights Clinic. The report characterizes state prison conditions as a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution barring cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of international human rights standards. It calls on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to bring temperatures down to 85 degrees in the state’s 109 prisons this summer.

Prison reports previously showed 19 workers behind bars have died since 1998 from heat-related illnesses during the summer when the heat index in cells regularly tops 115 degrees. In the case of one death cited in a lawsuit, the index topped 149 degrees. Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials have admitted that 12 inmates died as a result of high temperatures since 2007.

Texas officials argue that inmates have access to water and are allowed to buy personal fans and dress in shorts. “We supply ice water and have fans and other equipment to increase air movement,” Texas Department of Criminal Justice Executive Director Brad Livingston told the Houston Chronicle April 26. “We believe the protocols are appropriate.”

When interviewed by the Militant, former convict and prisoner rights activist Ray Hill disputed the official’s claims:

“In Texas you can get above 100 degrees any day from May to October,” said Hill, founder of “The Prison Show” radio program on Houston’s KPFT 90.1 FM station. “Now magnify that in brick and steel buildings with windows that often can’t be opened. Outside it may be 90, but on the first tier it will be 100, the second tier more like 110 and the third even more.

“They say they have ice makers,” said Hill. “But they are the tiniest ones I’ve ever seen. A small cafe is too much for those things, not to mention a state prison with 1,600 inmates. Fans? They’re available in the commissary, but I hope the outlet in your cell works. Water? There’s never enough water. We used to make a cell-block swamp cooler by getting the top sheet wet in the toilet — there wasn’t enough water from the sink — and then laying under it all night long. That was about the only way to cool down after working outside all day.”

Lawyers representing the family of Larry Gene McCollum have said that the most modest remedies were unavailable to him when he died from heatstroke in July 2011 — a week after being sent to Hutchins State Jail in Dallas.

As a new inmate, McCollum did not yet have commissary privileges, which meant that he couldn’t buy a fan, or shorts, or even a cup. He began to have convulsions in a cell with no air conditioning, no window or ventilation. According to prison records, the indoor heat index that week topped 150 degrees. By the time he arrived at the emergency room at Parkland Hospital, his body temperature was over 109 degrees and he was comatose.

The state’s newer prisons are worse than the older facilities, which have more windows that can be opened. The newer prisons supposedly rely on air-circulation systems, which according to several lawsuits, just move sweltering air around.

Last year prison officials spent $750,000 to build six pig barns with a “climate-controlled environment,” including water misters that could lower summertime temperatures by up to 20 degrees.

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