Judge Says All Texas Prisons to be Air-Conditioned by 2029

  

Last Tuesday, Sept. 22, U. S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled that the Texas state prison system must install air conditioning for every last one of its prison beds no later than Dec. 31, 2029.  According to an Associated Press report, Texas prison administrators have vowed to appeal this ruling, so it is far from a done deal.  But this event is a landmark in the long and sweaty road toward providing prisoners something that has become to other Texans almost as necessary as food and water in the summertime.

 

Texas and air conditioning go back a long way.  The first church building to be air-conditioned west of the Mississippi, and possibly in the entire U. S., was the Lutcher Memorial First Presbyterian Church of Orange, a town in the extreme southeast corner of the state.  Oil was discovered nearby in 1913, and the newly prosperous residents paid for not only a state-of-the-art air-conditioning system to be installed for the relatively small 150-member congregation, but also for a separate building to house the diesel engines that ran the ammonia compressors.  You see, Orange did not yet have an electric utility, but that didn't stop the Orange Presbyterians.  And the humid pollen-laden summer streets of Houston saw another air-conditioning first in 1930 when a wealthy businessman suffering from hay fever paid to get a custom-installed air conditioner in his Cadillac, apparently the first passenger vehicle so provided in the U. S.

 

So with such a glorious history of air conditioning, why has Texas been so far behind when it comes to air-conditioning prisons?  The answer depends on who you ask.

 

The prison administrators themselves say it will cost too much.  They have been pegging away at air-conditioning one unit here and another unit there for many years, but as of the end of 2026, they estimate that only 60,000 prison beds will be in air-conditioned spaces.  That's less than half of the approximately 143,000 people housed in Texas prisons today.  In the system's defense, this does represent progress compared to eight years ago, when in 2018 only 35,000 beds were air-conditioned. 

 

But people are still dying of the heat inside Texas prisons—three in 2023 alone.  A prison sentence should not turn into a death-by-heatstroke sentence.  And besides the avoidable human suffering that old un-air-conditioned prisons cause, the prison administrators have admitted that the lack of air conditioning in prisoner spaces has made it harder to recruit guards and other staff.  Working in a prison is no picnic, and if you add to it the fact that you're likely to be dealing with 100-degree-plus airless environments as well, I'm surprised they can find anybody to work under such conditions no matter how well they're paid. 

 

There is plenty of blame to go around in this situation.  During the 2023 legislative cycle, the state had a budget surplus of $33 billion.  Out of that surplus, the Texas legislature in its wisdom decided to allocate a measly $85 million to prison air conditioning.  While that did help, it fell far short of air-conditioning every Texas prison, which the prison system itself estimates will cost on the order of $1.5 billion.  This situation reminds me of the engineering adage:  "If there's not enough time (or money) to do it right, there's always enough time to do it over." 

 

The lawsuit leading to the recent ruling was filed initially by Bernie Tiede, a former mortician whose life story (and life sentence for murder) inspired the wickedly funny Richard Linklater film "Bernie."  Other prisoner-rights groups joined in the suit, and there was rejoicing among these and other prisoner advocates when the news of the decision reached them.

 

Now it is true that once upon a time, no prison was air-conditioned anywhere.  And once upon a time, say around 1910 before air conditioning was a thing in Texas, there were only 3.9 million people in the state, not 32 million.  And those few rugged souls were used to living in hot houses, going to work in hot stores and offices, and just sucking it up. 

 

Virtually no one in Texas lives that way today, including members of the criminal class.  If there were some weird sociological phenomenon that prevented anyone with a present or future criminal record from living with air conditioning outside prisons, it would be reasonable not to air-condition Texas prisons, much as Muslims are provided with copies of the Quran—it's what they're used to having, or not having.

 

But that is not the case.  I don't know of any medical studies that would confirm this, but it's likely that people not used to spending most of their time in 100+ temperatures are physiologically vulnerable to heat stroke and related ills when put into such temperatures.  At any rate, Judge Pitman ruled that subjecting prisoners to such conditions now amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the U. S. Constitution.  And the Texas Department of Criminal Justice now has less than four years to fix the situation.

 

Administratively, they are between a rock and a hard place.  While their estimate of over a billion dollars may be high, they can't spend money they don't have.  And it would be an exercise in Pollyannaish optimism to expect the Texas legislature next year to calmly and deliberately hand over the money needed to air-condition people who can't even vote for them in many cases. 

 

But miracles can happen, and maybe we really will see all Texas prisons air-conditioned before the expiration of the twelfth decade after those Presbyterians exulted in their 70-degree comfort in the steamy summer of 1914 in Orange.  Mind you, I have nothing against Presbyterians.  But everybody in the state government who can do something about this situation should read Luke 16:19-31, in which Jesus tells about the rich man who walked by the poor, sick Lazarus every day without helping him.  Lazarus died and went to be comforted by Father Abraham.  When the rich man died, he found himself in very warm conditions indeed, warmer even than a Texas prison in August.  To the Texas legislators and prison administrators I will only say, it can happen to you.

 

Sources:  The AP article reporting the decision by Judge Pitman is at https://apnews.com/article/hot-texas-prison-judge-ruling-air-conditioning-fa2f1997bd77b47129cdfe5c2350332d.  The First Presbyterian Church of Orange (still standing, with the power-plant building behind it) had its air conditioning described in Ice & Refrigeration, vol. 46, June 1914, pp. 309-310.  The first air-conditioned car is recounted in Raymond Arsenault's essay "The End of the Long Hot Summer:  The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture" in The Journal of Southern History, vol. 50, Nov. 1984, pp. 597-628.  I also referred to the Wikipedia article on Judge Pitman.