Texas House advances bill requiring A/C in prisons; proposal's fate uncertain in Senate

Yahoo

16-05-2025

The Texas House overwhelmingly passed legislation Thursday night to require air conditioning across the state's prison system, marking the third time in five years that the lower chamber has approved such a measure. The Senate has declined to take it up in the previous two sessions.
The 89-43 vote comes less than two months after an Austin federal judge declared extreme heat in Texas prisons to be 'plainly unconstitutional' and warned lawmakers that he expects to order the state to install permanent air-conditioning systemwide. It also took place hours before a midnight cutoff for the House to pass bills originating in that chamber.
House Bill 3006 is expected to face an uphill battle in the more conservative state Senate, which has repeatedly declined to hear similar proposals.
Democratic state Rep. Terry Canales of Edinburg, a criminal defense attorney, said he filed the bill because the constant, sweltering heat in lockups is 'inhumane' and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
'Many people are not violent offenders,' he told the American-Statesman. 'They surely didn't get sentenced to death. But we're killing them. We're cooking people.'
Over 60% of Texas inmates are being held on violent offenses, 15% on drug-related offenses and 9% on property offenses. The average prisoner is 41 years old, according to Texas 2036, a center-right policy think tank.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice Director Bryan Collier has acknowledged that heat was a factor in three inmates' deaths from multiple causes in 2023. Prison guards and staff members also continue to fall ill from heat exposure, and the system struggled with a turnover rate of 26% in 2023, one of the hottest years in recent Texas history.
HB 3006 outlines a three-phased approach that would require TDCJ to install climate control in one-third of its facilities by 2028, another one-third by 2030 and the final third of the facilities by 2032 — but only if it receives the funds to do so. The agency would be mandated to solicit competitive bids from private contractors to complete the project, and the cost would be capped at $100 million per phase.
Canales described visiting the minimum-security prison in his hometown on a broiling Texas summer day, where the odor of male sweat is so strong that 'you can taste it' and where prisoners flood their cells with toilet water, then 'take turns lying in it' overnight to cool down.
In a yearslong legal battle over the climate control in Texas prisons, plaintiffs are asking the court to require the state to maintain cell temperatures between 65 and 85 degrees, a similar range as Texas jails and federal prisons are required to maintain. Nearly 70% of cells in the state prison system lack air conditioning, according to a court filing in the lawsuit.
On the state's current trajectory, it would take at least 25 years to ensure all cells are climate-controlled, which is "insufficient under the Eight Amendment," U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman found in his March ruling on a request for a preliminary injunction. Pitman urged Collier to prepare for an adverse final ruling that would require Texas to air-condition all cells, and he recently scheduled a jury trial for March 2026.
TDCJ has installed nearly 48,000 "cool beds" in its system so far and is in the process of procuring 12,000 more. The agency received $85 million for additional air conditioning installation in 2023 and is requesting another $118 million for the next bieennium, which it says would allow for 16,000 more air-conditioned beds. That would bring the total number to 78,000 in a system that housed nearly 133,000 inmates in 2023.
Even if a bill requiring A/C does not pass the Senate, it is likely that the prison system will receive more state funds to install air conditioning. State Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, told the Texas Tribune that the state budget will include the $118 million the TDCJ has requested to install around 11,000 additional cool beds over the next two years. The state will also allocate $3 million for new dorms, which would be air conditioned, she wrote in the statement, the Tribune reported.
Huffman did not respond to Statesman requests for comment.
State Rep. Richard Hayes, R-Hickory Creek, said he voted against the proposal because he believed a federal judge had already required the state to install air conditioning in prisons. He also doesn't believe all prisoners need climate control, though he said some populations do.
"We didn't have A/C when I was a kid," Hayes told the Statesman, adding that some military facilities also lack air conditioning.
Canales, the House's second-most conservative Democrat as per the Texas Tribune's 2023 rankings, disagrees with lawmakers who view installing A/C as 'soft on crime.' Heat can increase aggression and cause disorientation among inmates, he said, making them more difficult to control for guards who also struggle in sweltering temperatures.
'It's not soft on crime,' Canales said. 'It's stupid on crime.'
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas House overwhelmingly passes bill to require A/C in state prisons