No doubt we are in for another hot summer with highs over 100 degrees in Texas prisons. Yet Texas continues to fight to avoid air conditioning their prison system. They have put an end to lockdowns or major shake downs between April and October due to heat-related illnesses resulting in ambulance rides and expenses. Yet it’s not nearly as bad as it was back in the nineties.
It was 1999 when Texas prisons began to pass out ice and cold water during the heat to try to avoid further deaths from heat-related illness and the subsequent lawsuits that would come with them. There was an attitude before that of thinking prisoners were meant to suffer while incarcerated and a few deaths along the way was a small price to pay for teaching criminals a hard lesson that crime doesn’t pay.
There was no organization called CURE to provide fans for indigent prisoners either, and big day room fans were rare. Now there are big fans everywhere and water coolers being refilled hourly. We have Respite areas where any prisoner can go sit in air conditioning as long as he feels the need. Still, I listen to prisoners whine about conditions. They act as if they cannot drink tap water when coolers run out between fillings. Of course, the reason coolers run out is due to the guys filling plastic bags with cold water to chill their sodas or using ice water to wet cool down towels. Then there are the guys that fill up a gallon or more of containers before going to their cells that will be hot in ten minutes or less and often be poured out without being drank.
Others try to hog big fans for their personal use. In the end, our biggest problem in prison these days, as it always has been, is the selfish nature of prisoners who never think about the next man or how their behavior will effect others.
Currently our head warden, Warden Gruver, has a policy in place requiring prisoners to be racked up during count times. Those are 8 a.m. each morning and then 1, 7, 9, and 11 p.m. and we are always locked in our cells for an hour or more. Those p.m. counts are in the hottest part of the day when exterior walls, heated by the sun, are radiating heat into our cells and turning our cells into ovens. Our personal fans are blowing the hot air around and all you can do if you don’t want to spend the night sitting in a chair in Respite is wash off with cold water at the sink and try to survive.
Warden Gruver has so far refused to rescind his rack-up policy during count. The bottom line truth is simple. There will always be people in power in prison who think it is their job to punish prisoners and it’s up to prisoners to learn survival techniques.
Cutting back on heavy meals filled with excessive salt and fat can increase your ability to deal with heat. Drink plenty of water even if it’s not iced and when you feel over heated, if you can’t get to a cold shower or Respite area with AC, get in the sink and rinse off with cold water to lower your core temperature. We have to take responsibility for ourselves and watch out for one another. What would it hurt to let someone have your seat in front of the day room fan for an hour so they can cool off?
If prisoners learned to watch out for themselves as well as their fellow prisoners, we can all get through the heat together and maybe even survive long enough to make parole and return to our families. However bad it is where you are, you have to remember it could be worse. I can promise you there was a time in Texas prison when it was.
Daniel Harris #00622851
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Boyd Unit
200 Spur 113
Teague, TX 75860-2007
