{"id":230193,"date":"2026-04-01T12:54:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/230193\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T12:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:54:21","slug":"tdcjs-estimated-cost-to-fully-cool-texas-prisons-rises-to-1-5b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/230193\/","title":{"rendered":"TDCJ\u2019s estimated cost to fully cool Texas prisons rises to $1.5B"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To cool the state\u2019s entire prison system, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has said it would cost more than $1 billion. But so far, TDCJ has not asked the Legislature for the full funding, even as more than 80,000 inmates in its facilities endure the scorching summer months without air-conditioning.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, former and current TDCJ leaders testified during the second day of a federal trial over insufficient air-conditioning in Texas prisons that the department has asked for smaller amounts in order to build and maintain credibility with lawmakers. These requests depend on what officials think TDCJ could achieve regarding the design and installation of air conditioning within the next two fiscal years, while also considering \u201ccompeting priorities\u201d such as health care and food, they added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did what we said we would do with it,\u201d said Bryan Collier, who retired from the TDCJ\u2019s lead role in August after nine years on the job.<\/p>\n

Bobby Lumpkin, who took over<\/a> the position, echoed his predecessor\u2019s sentiment a few hours later: \u201cWe have to be good fiscal stewards.\u201d He also confirmed that the cost estimate to fully air-condition Texas prisons has climbed to $1.5 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ongoing trial over the issue of extreme heat in TDCJ facilities comes a year after a March 2025 ruling from U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman that said housing Texas prison inmates in sweltering facilities that lack air conditioning is \u201cplainly unconstitutional.\u201d But the Obama appointee declined at the time to force TDCJ to immediately install temporary or permanent air conditioning. The judge instead pushed the plaintiffs \u2014 who are asking for the entire prison system to be air-conditioned by the end of 2029, along with measurable milestones during that period \u2014 toward a trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTDCJ still refuses to treat this as an emergency,\u201d attorney Kevin Homiak said Monday in the opening statement for the plaintiffs, which include several organizations advocating for those in prisons.<\/p>\n

Wade Johnson, an attorney defending TDCJ, countered that the agency is ramping up audits, mitigation efforts and the addition of cool beds. He also said the plaintiffs\u2019 claim of deliberate indifference is an \u201cextremely high standard to meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018All it takes is money\u2019<\/p>\n

Throughout the lawsuit, costs have emerged as a major issue in adding air conditioning to state prisons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Collier previously said he wanted to install air conditioning in every prison but he simply didn\u2019t have the funds to do so. But TDCJ could be more aggressive in pushing for that funding, the plaintiffs argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot and it\u2019s expensive, but all it takes is money,\u201d Jeff Edwards, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Texas Tribune at the start of the trial. \u201cAnd so if you don\u2019t ask for the money, you\u2019re never going to get it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Edwards pushed Lumpkin to say whether he could commit to asking for the necessary funding without a court order, and whether the department is obligated to follow the U.S. Constitution and not subject those in prison to cruel and unusual punishment in the form of extreme heat.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

TDCJ can seek out the amount that it could \u201coperationalize,\u201d along with other \u201ccompeting priorities,\u201d Lumpkin repeatedly replied. He added that the department has not yet done the appropriations request for the next legislative session in 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Texas Legislature has repeatedly failed to pass any legislation<\/a> requiring air conditioning in all Texas prisons, while providing a fraction of the cost estimate. For instance, lawmakers provided $118 million in 2025 for air conditioning installment, which the department said<\/a> would help bring the total number of cool beds to more than 80,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this figure would still leave a significant chunk of people currently in TDCJ facilities without sufficient air conditioning. That population is also projected to grow over the next few years.<\/p>\n

Alleged heat-related deaths<\/p>\n

Amid the technical questions, the two days of trial have also featured discussions about the human toll of extreme heat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys presented Monday that there were allegedly five heat-related deaths over the last two summers in Texas prisons. TDCJ did not report them to the state Legislature, as the department has not publicly acknowledged heat as a significant factor in these deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Three of the suspected heat-related deaths took place between June and August 2024, according to the plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys. The other two alleged cases happened in July and August 2025. In all of these cases, the plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys showed that there were sweltering heat indexes near the time of their death, including some that reached well into the triple digits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s attorneys argued Monday that they could be attributed to other issues instead, such as drug toxicity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the alleged heat-related deaths also didn\u2019t have a recorded body temperature \u2014 a gap that the plaintiffs\u2019 experts say TDCJ must address in order to fully understand their deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can you have a medical examiner give you the right opinion [about] the cause of death when that medical examiner doesn\u2019t know the body temperature?\u201d Susi Vassallo, a medical toxicology specialist, said Monday.<\/p>\n

According to a TDCJ policy shown during the Tuesday hearing, medical providers are encouraged to take body temperatures, but they are not required to do so. Collier and Lumpkin then repeatedly said during their testimonies that they would not want to interfere with medical decisions because they are not experts in this area.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These officials and the state\u2019s attorneys have also touted TDCJ\u2019s heat mitigation efforts, including pointing to the downward trend in the number of heat-related grievances filed by inmates over the past few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

People in TDCJ custody still filed more than 10,000 of such grievances in the last two years, the plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys noted. Dozens of staff and inmates have also reported heat illnesses.<\/p>\n

The trial, which is being heard by Pitman instead of a jury, is expected to last two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,7577,29,293,28,49451],"class_list":["post-230193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-department-of-criminal-justice","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-prisons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}