The temperatures in some Texas prisons are much higher than staff record them to be, according to a court-requested investigation, reported by KUT News.
According to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice internal investigation, employees from at least one Texas prison forged temperature records. The agency uses these records to decide what conditions are dangerous to inmates and staff.
The investigation focused on the temperature logs from the Mark W. Stiles Unit in Beaumont during the summer of 2022. It found that unit staff would “recreate” missing or “defaced (e.g., doodles, stick figure cartoons, etc.)” logs by estimating hourly temperatures based on records from different dates or other local units.
Some temperatures were far from accurate. On July 31, 2022, employees at the Stiles Unit recorded temperatures between 58 and 60 degrees compared to the lowest actual temperature of 76 degrees, KUT reported.
Roughly 70% of TDCJ prisons lack air conditioning in inmate housing units, with these units regularly reaching temperatures of at least 100 degrees, alleged Bernhardt Tiede II, who is incarcerated, in a 2024 amended complaint part of a federal lawsuit against the executive director of TDCJ. Currently, 34 units are fully air-conditioned, according to the TDCJ.
A federal judge requested the internal investigation in August during a hearing in Tiede’s case, which is challenging the conditions inside Texas’ prisons. Tiede and several criminal justice advocacy organizations are the plaintiffs.
Although the investigation finished last November, it was only released publicly this week. According to a motion, plaintiffs claimed the Department of Criminal Justice “sat on the report for four months” without proper explanation. In a brief filed on Tuesday, the agency’s attorneys conceded to the inaccuracies of some temperature logs but said there was no intention “to mislead or deceive.”
The investigation was conducted by Chris Cirrito, the chief audit executive for the Texas Board of Criminal Justice. According to his report, cited by KUT News, the temperature logs were forged after they were requested under Texas’ public records laws. Only then did employees know some records were missing or defaced, Cirrito found.
“The evidence supports periods of carelessness in record creation and/or retention and an attempt by the unit to avoid reporting missing temperature logs,” Cirrito said.
Read more at KUT News.
