I’m still trying to reach a decision on whether Texas prison units should be air conditioned.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is being sued by the Texas Civil Rights Project and others on behalf of elderly and ailing inmates who contend the legendary Texas heat is too much for the inmates.

None of TDCJ’s prison units have air conditioning. They have fans that blow ambient around. TDCJ calls it good. Until now, it had been good enough for state’s prison inmates.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/summer-coming

One issue that makes me lean in favor of providing A/C units in prison is a statement I heard shortly after I came to Amarillo to take up my job as editorial page editor of the newspaper.

I took a guided tour in 1995 of the William P. Clements Unit northeast of the city, a maximum-security lockdown. The then-deputy warden, Rick Hudson, took me on the tour. I saw the entire place, from in-take, to the mess hall, to the recreational areas, the now-defunct saddle shop, the isolation cells, visitation areas. You name it, I saw it.

Hudson told me that day that corrections officers have to break up fights almost daily. The violence inside the walls escalates dramatically during the summer, when the temperature routinely hits 90 and often goes past 100 degrees.

Tempers that already are short to begin and they flare at the slightest provocation and often explode into serious violence. Why? Well, think of how you might react if you were locked up behind concrete, steel, razor wire and were being watched constantly by men armed to the teeth with weaponry. Then add the oppressive heat to that situation and you have a formula for some serious violence.

Do we want to expose our corrections officers to this kind of emotional powder keg? I think not.

Don’t misunderstand. I am not proposing we coddle these guys. I am suggesting that air conditioning might be in the TDCJ future.

The federal court system has taken over the state prison system at least once already in a ruling meant to relieve overcrowding. It well could do so again if the state loses this battle over air conditioning.