Editor’s note: Lanae Tipton is an incarcerated journalist in Texas whose work is supported by Empowerment Avenue, an organization that seeks to increase and normalize the inclusion of incarcerated writers in mainstream publications.
Back in May, through the metal-plated mesh cutouts of my cell door in solitary confinement, I watched the gigantic terrorizer being rolled into the dorm. The industrial fan’s appearance meant the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was gearing up for the summer.
Here in the Dr. Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, the fan doesn’t cool anything down as temperatures rise outside. It circulates the scalding hot air already within.
That’s because TDCJ usually commits its most sadistic act around the same time: screwing our cell windows shut. Doing so cuts off any chance of natural air circulation. (TDCJ declined to answer questions from The Barbed Wire about the practice.)
Other units at TDCJ also have sealed windows and are painted black, which turns the closet-sized cells into smoldering furnaces. The windows in my solitary dorm aren’t black, which in some ways, makes us the lucky ones.
More than two-thirds of Texas’ 100 prisons don’t have air conditioning, though temperatures routinely break 100-degrees, as they already have in some parts of the state. As of Thursday, North Texas was facing its hottest day of the year yet — it was placed under a heat advisory as temperatures threatened to reach at least 105 degrees.
In late March, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled that housing incarcerated Texans in life-threatening heat with no air conditioning is unconstitutional. However, his ruling failed to advocate for the installation of air-conditioning.
The 91-page opinion is part of a lawsuit originally filed by Bernie Tiede, a former mortician whose murder case inspired the movie “Bernie,” alleging that he suffered a stroke from heat exposure inside a TDCJ facility that left him with permanent injuries and that TDCJ was not doing enough to keep incarcerated people safe in extreme Texas heat.
Three organizations focusing on advocating for the rights of incarcerated people have joined the suit, including Lioness: Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance. Marci Marie Simmons, who served 10 years for felony theft and is now Lioness’ outreach coordinator, testified last year that in summer, she “was in complete survival mode. I felt like a caged animal.”
TDCJ declined to answer any questions from The Barbed Wire citing pending litigation.
In their response in the Tiede case, TDCJ blamed the legislature for not installing air conditioning at every TDCJ unit, saying there’s not enough money. The court found that the executive director of TDCJ, Bryan Collier, “is well aware of the substantial risk of harm from extreme heat, given the numerous lawsuits that have been filed against him, his predecessors, and TDCJ itself over the last twenty-five years for deaths and serious illnesses caused by extreme heat.”
Meanwhile, lawmakers are led to believe that there are protocols in place to prevent heat-related issues like heat exhaustion, delirium, seizures, and death from occurring inside prisons. Yet, the facilities’ preventative measures like the industrial fan hardly make a dent in the ever-present, all-consuming heat — researchers have found that fans don’t help when the heat index is above 99 degrees, and in fact they actually elevate the risk of heat related illness. The Texas Tribune found that at least 41 Texas prisoners died during a heat wave in 2023. That was a remarkable increase from the deaths of 23 people in state prisons due to excessive heat between 1998 and 2012, as was reported by the Dallas Morning News.
In 2023, the agency reportedly received $85 million for air conditioning, enabling its various facilities to add 2,902 air-conditioned beds. It received another $118 million this year.
But as the Dallas Morning News put it in an editorial this week: “The state is making progress. It’s just doing so without the kind of urgency this issue deserves, and it has a very long way to go.”
Internal policy says TDCJ provides respite in the form of fans, cold showers, and ice to those in prison but only when the heat index is above 90 degrees. But according to an internal investigation ordered by Pitman in August as part of the Tiede case, employees from at least one Texas prison forged temperature records that the agency uses to decide what conditions are dangerous to those who are incarcerated. The investigation focused on the temperature logs from a 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.
In Pitman’s March ruling, he wrote that inmates filed 450 formal grievances. Relief won’t come when compassion towards the people in need of help remains nonexistent. I’ve witnessed staff fail or refuse to apply their training during active crises and even outright ignore protocol to intervene.
This is even more perplexing, considering the effects of the heat are felt by staffers too. “In 2022 and 2023, TDCJ staff filed nearly 80 workers’ compensation claims related to the heat,” Pitman said. One employee reported: “I got overheated, very weak, confused and unable to respond. Also, I was dry heaving and felt nauseated, I vomited blood.”
One afternoon late last June, as all of the windows had been sealed, and the scorching heat had set in, I heard the sound of screaming reverberate through the open expanse of the humid dorm.
I peeled my overheated body off the cement floor, which I had flooded with water from my sink to help cool down my cell.
I stood at the locked door and peered out, clad in the common summertime loungewear for women who are incarcerated in solitary at TDCJ: a bra and panties. I watched as the building’s janitor, also incarcerated, scrambled up the stairs, drenched in sweat. (The janitor essentially acts as a helper or errand girl for the officers working in the segregation building, undertaking a wide variety of tasks around the building.) There was no officer in sight as the deafening screams continued.
Apparently, the screaming was someone having a seizure and calling for help before the attack totally consumed her. The helper made a beeline for the “picket,” which is an air-conditioned control center that the officers often disappear to. After almost stumbling down the dorm’s staircase, tripping once again at the threshold of the locked entrance to the dorm, the helper banged wildly against the plexiglass in an attempt to catch the attention of the officers hidden inside, asking them to release the lock from the picket so she could exit the dorm.
Springing into the vestibule, the helper spoke with urgency, gesturing to the top-tier cell to a seemingly unconcerned officer. Minutes later, the unpaid incarcerated employee raced back into the dorm at breakneck speed, carrying a pitcher filled with water, splashing some on the ground as she sprinted. Meanwhile, the officers in the picket didn’t even budge.
Rivulets of sweat ran down my neck, since I was no longer laying in the man-made pond I had created on my floor. The water on my body immediately started to dry up in the hot air. I gulped down some ice water, splashing a little on my chest, feeling utterly useless as I continued to watch the worker run to and fro.
Out of breath and panicky, the helper scaled the top floor landing, frantically reached the cell, threw the remaining water from the pitcher onto the seizing woman through the mesh of the closed cell door, then raced back down the stairs, feet gaining surety with each determined step as she refilled the pitcher once again. She made the trip three more times, resulting in labored breathing and a sweat-soaked uniform.
After throwing the last dash of water through the mesh, she stood protectively in front of the cell, concerned eyes peering inside. Worry lines wrinkled her forehead, a war clearly raging within her due to the limited help she could actually offer.
I couldn’t hear the words she slowly mouthed into the cell, but I inferred by her calm demeanor that she was praying over the woman.
About ten minutes later, a face appeared on the other side of the mesh. The seizing woman looked dazed, but held an expression of gratitude toward the worker. Who, by that time, had tamed her erratic breathing but remained profuse with sweat.
Speeding back downstairs, the helper fetched the woman more ice water. She made the journey two more times — each time returning to converse with the woman in the cell in what looked like an attempt to keep her calm, and to prevent another seizure. The helper began to pray again for the woman, this time aloud and with an enhanced fervor.
How many more have to suffer for the courts and our politicians to realize that this is not true? Even as incarcerated people continue to suffer, our lawmakers won’t act — this legislative session, four bills were proposed to address life-threatening heat in TDCJ facilities. Only one — requiring prisons to have air conditioning by the end of 2032 — advanced out of committee before the deadline. However, it wasn’t signed into law before the end of session. It’s the latest in a string of bills filed since 2018, when the state settled a lawsuit over its failure to sufficiently prevent heat-related illness and death, and when the House Corrections Committee flagged in a report that more needed to be done.
Why can’t members of the Texas Legislature get enough support to require prisons to have air conditioning? Or keep the temperature between 65 and 85 degrees? Is it because carceral stereotypes deem this kind of torture as a reasonable punishment?
Suddenly, the dorm’s front door banged open as an officer barged in and bellowed at the incarcerated worker in an irritated voice, “Aren’t you supposed to be working? Get the fuck away from the doors!”
Ironic, I thought. The person who has the power to actually help, instead berates the only person who actually did something helpful.
On any given summer day, someone incarcerated in a TDCJ facility could have a heat-induced stroke or seizure — the state has had to pay millions in wrongful death and civil rights lawsuits over the last decade, and one study found approximately 13% of deaths in Texas prisons in warm months could have been caused by extreme heat. Who lives and who dies can depend on who is around to help. Many seize, reorientate, and recover alone.
The woman I heard screaming last summer was lucky that her seizure commenced during the work hours of the building’s helper.
Others like 37-year-old Elizabeth Hagerty — who died at my unit in June, less than a month before her release date — have not been so privileged.
Reporting note: The Barbed Wire submitted a Public Information Act request to TDCJ in late May for medical incident reports or notices involving both TDCJ staff and people incarcerated at the Lane Murray Unit related to heat, dehydration or seizures, as well as other heat-related complaints filed to TDCJ, and email communication between TDCJ staff regarding concerns about heat that prompted investigations or TDCJ response last summer. TDCJ has asserted that information about inmates is exempt from public information requests; and that the other records requested are exempt because of pending or potential litigation. TDCJ has requested a decision from the Texas Attorney General’s office. That request was still pending at the time of publication.
