A group of organizations has sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) over the prison heat crisis, arguing that confining people in sweltering conditions violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. This trial began in federal court in early April and has given some hope to incarcerated people and their advocates, who are asking the judge to force the state of Texas to finally air-condition its prisons. This is the extent of the prison heat crisis.

Texas incarcerates more people per capita than any other state, and the majority of Texas jails and prisons are not air-conditioned. Research shows that air-conditioning would help protect the health of incarcerated people. Advocates, attorneys, and incarcerated people have fought for heat relief in prison for decades as the prison heat crisis has worsened.

After a long day of prison farm labor under the scorching Texas summer sun, Marci Marie Simmons would return to her cell, which would be hotter than outside. “You would have to mentally prepare yourself knowing that you were going back into that dorm,” Simmons, who spent years incarcerated in a prison without air-conditioning, told NPR. “I remember laying on my bunk, wondering if I would survive.”

Many incarcerated people don’t survive intense summer heat, showing the toll of the prison heat crisis. During a 2023 heat wave, at least 41 incarcerated people died in Texas prisons, where heat readings in state prisons regularly read 100 degrees or higher. Summer has long been a season of intense suffering for people incarcerated in Southern states in prisons without air-conditioning. This will only worsen as global temperatures increase. As a result of climate change, even more Northern prisons are already experiencing extreme heat.

Lance Lowry, the former head of the Correctional Officers Union, is quoted in the new lawsuit as saying regarding the prison heat crisis, “We’re not trying to make this lush, we’re trying to make it humane. . . . These are institutions for incarceration. The incarceration is their punishment. Not cooking them to death.”

Khaȧliq Shakur, who has spent more than 20 Texas summers behind bars, wrote that being trapped in a cell in a hot prison indeed feels like being cooked, demonstrating the terrifying impact of the prison heat crisis. “Almost everybody has visited a fast-food restaurant or roadside gas station at some point in their lives. Can you picture the rotisserie chickens, slowly rotating under the red-hot light? . . . After living in Texas prisons for 23 years, I think I can tell you what it feels like to be that chicken.”

Read the full article about the prison heat crisis by Erica Bryant at Vera Institute of Justice.