AUSTIN — State-run prisons would be required to have air conditioning by the end of 2032 under a bill advanced by the Texas House on Thursday.
Some Texas prisons have reached up to 100 degrees in recent years — resulting in death in some instances, The Dallas Morning News has reported. The vast majority of the state’s prisons do not have air conditioning.
Efforts to fix that tentatively ed the House, where it needs one more vote to head to the Senate. However, its fate likely faces an uphill battle.
Similar proposals over the past two sessions didn’t even get a Senate hearing — the first step for a bill to reach the floor for a vote.
House Bill 3006, by state Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, ed without debate on Thursday, the final day the House could vote on its own bills. Any such bill that did not by midnight effectively died; however, it could be brought back as an amendment to a bill.
This year’s effort less than two months after a federal judge in Austin ruled that the extreme heat in the state-run prisons was “plainly unconstitutional.”
That lawsuit, filed in 2023, seeks to force Texas to install air conditioning units. The bill would require state-run facilities to have climate control systems installed in three different phases over the next several years.
The temperature in state prisons with air conditioning would not be allowed to exceed 85 degrees under the bill.
The state has about 100 prisons and jails operated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
County jails must not be hotter than 85 degrees, according to state standards. Federal prisons in Texas must not be hotter than 76 degrees. Texas prisons, however, are not required to have air conditioning and about two-thirds of state prisons do not.
Summers in Texas can result in many consecutive days where the temperature exceeds 100 degrees, resulting in brutal conditions for people incarcerated. Former prisoners and prison advocates have previously said that people housed at state prisons have needed to use toilet bowl water in efforts to cool off.
The sweltering heat has resulted in deaths. Between 1998 and 2012, the lack of air conditioning in state prisons contributed to the deaths of 23 prisoners, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
More recently, Texas Department of Criminal Justice Director Bryan Collier itted in a federal court hearing that heat caused the death of three prisoners last year.