Prison cells so hot that inmates splash themselves with toilet water. Jails described as ovens where convicts are baked to death. An advocacy organization is suing the US state of Texas to mandate air conditioning for tens of thousands of inmates, arguing that temperatures reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 Celsius), according to convicts, are cruel and unconstitutional.
The suit, filed by Texas Prisons Community Advocates, follows three inmate deaths in the state's prison system in 2023 that officials admitted were partly due to extreme heat. Fifty-year-old Patrick Womack died after being denied a cold water bath. John Castillo, 32, who suffered from epilepsy, fetched water 23 times before he died with a body temperature above 105.
8 degrees Fahrenheit. And days before her death, Elizabeth Hagerty, 37, warned prison officials that she was at a higher risk of a heat stroke because of her obesity and diabetes. "In Texas, every summer we get triple digit weather.
Every summer we have high humidity, and every summer we lose lives," the group's director Amite Dominick told AFP. "Because we are baking people in that brick building." As temperatures rise in the southern United States, helped by global warming, inmates' families are never sure if their loved ones will survive another summer.
With only a third of the state's prison population of 134,000 inmates having adequate air conditioning, Dominick's group wants US District Court Judge Robert Pitman to require Texas to maintain .
