| UNFAIR PARK | ‘Slowly Cooked Alive’ Advocates say it’s impossible to know the true number of people who have died from heat-related illnesses in Texas prisons. BY TYLER HICKS Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) with dread and trepidation,” he wrote. “For one is acutely aware that one may not survive another summer. Many do not. The deadly heat in Texas prisons is killing us.” Hernandez, now free and attending grad- A uate school, was incarcerated on robbery and domestic violence charges in the Price Daniel Unit in Snyder, a prison about four hours west of Dallas. During the summer months of each of his 10 years in incarcera- tion, he and his fellow prisoners were forced to share a low supply of water and a few ex- tra fans. “One 10-gallon water cooler is placed in our living area under lock and key,” he wrote in Prison Writers, a publication by incarcer- ated people. “This 10-gallon cooler must provide cold water for 84 inmates, which it never does. An inmate can expect to get one 8 oz. cup of water every four hours. More- over, ice for the cooler is only provided twice a day and the ice frequently melts before the hottest part of the day.” His brief yet searing story also notes that the extra fans “simply circulate hot air” when the temperature exceeds 95 degrees, which it often does in West Texas. “It rou- tinely feels,” he wrote, “as if one’s sitting in a convection oven being slowly cooked alive.” According to a scathing new report, Her- nandez’s plight is nothing new for incarcer- ated Texans. With the sixth-highest state imprisonment rate, Texas is one of at least 13 states in the U.S. that does not have universal air conditioning in state prisons. Since 70% of Texas prisons are not fully air condi- tioned, prison staffers resort to “heat mitiga- tion efforts” like the methods described by Hernandez. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 44 these efforts weren’t enough. “COVID-19 is primarily mitigated through lockdown and movement restrictions,” says J. Carlee Pur- few years ago, Benny Her- nandez penned a dispatch from what reads like hell on Earth. “Prisoners look upon the summer months in the WhisperToMe, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons dum, one of the authors of the report. “Those measures cut these heat mitigation strategies off at the knees.” The report is the result of nearly three years of research by Texas Prison Commu- nity Advocates and the Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center at Texas A&M University, where Purdum works. Its findings, which were shared with the Texas House Appro- priations Committee on July 12, paint a painful portrait of life behind bars during summer months. “Incarcerated people have described the environment of extreme heat and the CO- VID-19 pandemic as a ‘living hell,’” the re- port’s authors write. Elsewhere, the authors note these conditions are argu- ably in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which pro- tects against cruel and un- usual punishment, and the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal pro- tection under law. According to Purdum and her co-au- Texas state prisons don’t handle the care of prisoners in extreme weather well. ditioning in the remaining facilities would cost $1 billion, a price tag that has been sharply criticized by Texas Democrats and Republicans alike. “TDCJ has previously over-inflated cost estimates for installing air conditioning to units,” notes the new report. The report goes on to say that in re- “THE DEADLY HEAT IN TEXAS PRISONS IS KILLING US.” - BENNY HERNANDEZ thors, at least 79 prisoners and prison staff- ers reported heat-related illnesses in 2018 alone. Yet because of the fears that often prevent incarcerated people from voicing complaints, the true number of illnesses is unknown. So is the number of deaths. Since 1998, 23 incarcerated Texans have died “heat-related” deaths. At least 10 of those deaths came during a record heatwave in summer 2011. But as noted by The Mar- shall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the criminal justice system, “it’s unknown how many more succumbed to heart attacks and other ailments in which heat was a contributing factor.” State prison officials have often pushed back against claims that their facilities are unsafe, even going so far as to contest the death of a man who reportedly died from hyperthermia while incarcerated in 2018. The TDCJ, which manages all of Texas’ prisons, estimates that installing air con- sponse to a 2017 lawsuit brought against TDCJ on behalf of the much-maligned Wallace Pack Unit in Grimes County, an ex- pert for the defense argued that installing AC in the unit would cost more than $20 million. The installation, which the court ultimately required, ended up costing only about $4 million. Mean- while, the lawsuit itself cost $7 million. “This investment would reduce their lia- bility,” Purdum says of the TDCJ, “but to fully talk in detail and describe all the ways the prison system is making prison a less safe environment, it is not in their best inter- est to admit that and expose that. They’re just not going to go into detail and describe how the heat is making things unsafe. They have many issues they are dealing with, and this is not something they want more scru- tiny under.” As illustrated by Hernandez’s story and this new report, the burden to mitigate heat often falls on the incarcerated people and the prison staff. Speaking to the Observer, Purdum calls this an “impossible” job. The solution, out- lined and clearly argued in the report and before the Texas House of Representatives, is to provide air conditioning and climate control within all the state prisons. Yet de- spite executive director Bryan Collier’s pres- ence at the same hearing as Purdum (he spoke just before she did), a spokesperson for TDCJ says the agency has yet to review the report. When asked by the Observer if the agency may use its funds to add more AC to prisons, the spokesperson pointed to the number of cooled beds available to incarcerated people. TDCJ could be compelled to add AC to the rest of their facilities, yet various bills to that effect have failed to gain traction in the Texas Senate. Calls for change, often led by experts like Purdum and the families of in- carcerated people, are frequently ignored by Attorney General Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott. “For more than a decade, Abbott has been a key figure stymying the fight for air conditioning in Texas carceral facilities,” journalist Alleen Brown recently wrote in The Intercept. “When he was the state at- torney general, Abbott defended the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from heat lawsuits. Today he sets the agenda for legis- lative sessions — where heat-relief bills … go to die.” As she gathered data for their report, Purdum came across many stories she still can’t shake. These are tales of spouses, partners and parents enduring a Texas heatwave while trying to imagine what it’s doing to their loved one behind bars. Occa- sionally, these people would receive letters talking of suicide; the heat was becoming too much. “Every time I hear those stories, I hug my son a little tighter,” Purdum says. “I hope he’ll never be incarcerated, but the re- ality is, it can happen to any of us. Any of our family members or friends could be in- carcerated, and we should think about how we’d like them to be treated if they are ever in this position.” In closing his dispatch from a prison sweltering in triple-digit heat, Benny Her- nandez said something similar “Ultimately, if you can look past the numbers affixed to our names and the white clothing that we wear on a daily basis,” he wrote, “what you will find is a fellow human being who is stumbling towards the light, just like you.” ▼ ELECTIONS DEMS ALLEGE FRAUD I DALLAS DEMOCRATS ARE ALLEGING THAT A GOP CANDIDATE FOR STATE REPRESENTATIVE SUBMITTED A FALSE APPLICATION. BY SIMONE CARTER n recent months, Texas Republicans have been warning of election fraud. Now, Dallas County Democrats are pushing back with their own claims that a GOP can- didate for state House submitted a fraudu- lent application. Earlier this month, a lawyer wrote the district attorney’s office on behalf of Dallas County Democratic Party Chair Kristy No- ble. The Democrats allege that Texas House District 114 candidate Mark Hajdu, a Repub- lican, falsely stated that he still lived within that district. They also claim that his wife, Dallas County Republican Party Chair Jen- nifer Stoddard-Hajdu, signed off on the false filing. The Hajdus’ alleged goal? To hand-pick a good Republican contender to >> p6 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 JULY 28–AUGUST 3, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com dallasobserver.com
