Texas legislators bury prison cooling bill, risking court fight
Texas lawmakers ended the state's most recent legislative session without advancing a plan to install air conditioning in the state's prison system — likely putting Texas on a collision course with a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit by prisoners.
Texas runs the nation's largest state prison system — with about 140,000 inmates — but only about a third of the beds are air conditioned. Temperatures inside the prisons regularly exceed 100 degrees in the summer, and researchers estimate that heat contributed to the deaths of 14 inmates annually in Texas from 2001 to 2019.
The Republican-controlled Legislature has tried to address the issue in its past three sessions, but this year lawmakers were under increased scrutiny because of a preliminary ruling in an inmates' lawsuit.
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U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled in March that the conditions are 'plainly unconstitutional' but stopped short of issuing an injunction on behalf of a group of inmates. He noted at the time there were bills pending in the Legislature to provide air conditioning and said a court order would divert resources that could be better spent fixing the problem.
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