I Watched a Woman Nearly Die in a Cell Across From Mine. Texas Prisons Need Air Conditioning.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://thebarbedwire.com/2025/07/25/texas-prisons-need-air-conditioning/

Here in the Dr. Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, the fan doesn’t cool anything down as temperatures rise outside. It circulates the scalding hot air already within.

That’s because TDCJ usually commits its most sadistic act around the same time: screwing our cell windows shut. Doing so cuts off any chance of natural air circulation. (TDCJ declined to answer questions from The Barbed Wire about the practice.)

Other units at TDCJ also have sealed windows and are painted black, which turns the closet-sized cells into smoldering furnaces. The windows in my solitary dorm aren’t black, which in some ways, makes us the lucky ones.

More than two-thirds of Texas’ 100 prisons don’t have air conditioning, though temperatures routinely break 100-degrees, as they already have in some parts of the state. As of Thursday, North Texas was facing its hottest day of the year yet — it was placed under a heat advisory as temperatures threatened to reach at least 105 degrees.

[underpants]

1. The City of Richmond's jail used to not have AC. That's bad but is just one.

Not over 60 of them.

[Solly Mack]

2. ...

[moonshinegnomie]

3. if a judge had any balls

they would order prisons to be retrorfitted with ac immediately and if not then they judge should take teh folloing actions

1) order the arrest of top officials for not doing it
2) order the release of prisoners locked up in those jails. start with the nonviolent one first and move up to tree. and then bus them and drop them of in front of the governors mansion,and dan patricks and ken paxtons homes

[soldierant]

5. IANAL, but I don't think

that judges can order people to be detained unledd thay are convicted of something, or awaiting trial and a flight risl. It's not in their job desctipyion.

[Greg_In_SF]

7. Unless there is a law

saying they must be air conditioned, what would the arrestable offense be??

[Pompoy]

4. Lanae Tipton, the writer is serving a 19 year prison sentence for robbery as an 18 year old

Now entering her second year on solitary confinement. Kind of a harsh sentence from the little I know. Gave birth in prison.

[Melon]

9. She didn't post her resume...multiple felonies

And multiple charges and trials. She was in the news about 5 years ago around here. She is not a victim. She broke into a home with guns and beat someone severely. It wasn’t her only crime and there was a trial after for more crimes where she got more felonies but I don’t recall that one. You don’t get 20 years around here for nothing. They release mild offenders early all the time. And it hasn’t been over 100 degrees in north Texas this year. It’s the mildest summer I remember in 10 years.

I’m not saying they don’t need AC, but take anything that she says through the lens of the picture she is painting.

Texas judge ruled earlier this year that no AC is unconstitutional.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/26/texas-prison-air-conditioning-lawsuit/

[Figarosmom]

6. Texas should be a place no one of

Any intelligence visits or lives. It should be a pariah. At least until the idiots there finally wake up snd vote Democratic in yhe gerrymandered districts.

[DFW]

8. About 16 million of the current residents of Texas were born in Texas.

Is there a list of people wanting to put up those "of any intelligence" who should be leaving? We can tackle the issue of the other 15 million who moved there after being born once we have found homes for those who were born there (please, not Oklahoma).

[Greg_In_SF]

10. Have you

ever been to Texas?