Texas\u2019 prison agency has asked the Legislature for $298 million over the next two years to add more than 15,700 air conditioned beds, saying the request will help deliver \u201csignificant and measurable progress\u201d toward addressing dangerous summer heat in state lockups.<\/p>\n
Inmate advocates are less enthused, calling the budget request a sign of \u201cdeliberate indifference\u201d to deadly conditions that will require an estimated $1.5 billion<\/a> to correct.<\/p>\n The budget debate comes as a federal judge weighs whether to order Texas to cool prisons where indoor temperatures routinely surpass 100 degrees in the summer, creating conditions U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman found to be \u201cplainly unconstitutional\u201d before he presided over a two-week trial on prison heat earlier this year.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear when Pitman will issue his ruling. To help the judge with that decision, both sides in the yearslong legal fight \u2014 Texas prison officials and inmate advocacy groups that sued the state \u2014 submitted post-trial legal briefs that show how far apart they remain.<\/p>\n In a June court filing<\/a>, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice outlined a two-phase plan to install air conditioning at all prisons. The brief says the agency \u201canticipates that it could obligate\u201d $774 million in the 2028\u201329 state budget, followed by $730.7 million in the following two years.<\/p>\n TDCJ\u2019s $298 million request for the next two-year budget puts it far behind its outlined schedule, signaling that the agency is still not treating extreme prison heat as an emergency, inmate advocates say. Nearly two-thirds of Texas\u2019 104 prisons are not fully air conditioned<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is more deliberate indifference,\u201d said Erica Grossman, an attorney for the plaintiffs. \u201cAnd it will lead to more completely preventable inmate deaths in the extreme heat every year.\u201d<\/p>\n At least 10 inmates died from heat-related reasons in the scorching summers between 2023 and 2025, the lawsuit alleged<\/a>. The agency disputes this figure, instead attributing the causes to drug overdoses or other medical conditions. <\/p>\n In a statement to The Texas Tribune, TDCJ said its budget request shows a commitment to increasing the number of air conditioned beds while balancing other needs such as prison population growth, which is projected<\/a> to soon top 150,000. <\/p>\n In particular, TDCJ said its $298 million request to install air conditioning is more than double<\/a> what it sought, and received, in the last legislative session. The agency also asked for $591.8 million to build expansion prison dorms with climate control. It said the requests, if approved by lawmakers, would add more than 21,000 cool beds. <\/p>\n \u201cTogether, these requests underscore significant and measurable progress toward expanding the capacity of cool beds,\u201d TDCJ said.<\/p>\n Grossman, who is seeking a court order forcing Texas to air condition its entire prison system by the end of 2029, said she wasn\u2019t surprised that prison officials are already dialing back their $774 million phase one target. During the trial, agency officials said it was less of a plan and more of an aspiration. <\/p>\n \u201cThey are outlines of how much money it would take to fund the system but never something that they ever, ever, ever commit to asking for,\u201d she said. \u201cThis only reinforces the need for a court order to fix this problem.\u201d <\/p>\n TDCJ is also overstating its commitment to prison cooling by touting the full construction cost of building air conditioned expansion dorms, Grossman added.<\/p>\n \u201cExpansion dorms are not the same thing as installing air conditioning\u201d in prisons where heat remains a risk to health, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cGood fiscal stewards\u201d<\/p>\n State law requires county jails to be kept between 65 and 85 degrees. Applying a similar standard to prisons, many of them constructed decades before air conditioning became available, has raised one central sticking point: Cost.<\/p>\n Former TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier, who retired<\/a> last year, has said he wanted to cool every facility but didn\u2019t have the money to complete the task. <\/p>\n Bills to require climate-controlled state prisons have repeatedly failed<\/a> at the Texas Legislature, which also declined to tap billions of dollars in budget surpluses in recent sessions to retrofit units with air conditioning. Even so, TDCJ said lawmakers have already provided \u201ca historic infusion of funding<\/a>\u201d by allocating<\/a> $85 million in 2023 and $118 million the following session<\/a> to add around 29,000 cool beds. <\/p>\n The Legislature also gave<\/a> TDCJ more than $400 million in 2025 to build air-conditioned expansion dorms and buy an existing lockup with climate control. <\/p>\n With an estimated $1.5 billion<\/a> needed to cool all prisons, inmate advocates say prison officials need to push for a lot more in direct funding.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a lot and it\u2019s expensive, but all it takes is money,\u201d Jeff Edwards, an attorney, told the Tribune<\/a> ahead of the federal trial over prison heat earlier this year. \u201cAnd so if you don\u2019t ask for the money, you\u2019re never going to get it.\u201d <\/p>\n Collier and his successor, Bobby Lumpkin, said the agency must maintain credibility with state lawmakers by requesting only what can be achieved within a two-year budget cycle while balancing other major priorities, such as inmate healthcare and contraband detection.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to be good fiscal stewards,\u201d Lumpkin said at the trial.<\/p>\n In its court filing, TDCJ also outlined additional obstacles to installing air conditioning, including the rural location of most prisons, their age and construction delays due to contraband search. In addition, the agency said the demand to build data centers<\/a> in Texas has caused \u201csignificant issues with equipment availability.\u201d <\/p>\n Ahead of the legislative session that begins in January, Republican leaders have instructed<\/a> state agencies to cut 3% from their budget requests to help fund priorities such as property tax cuts. TDCJ told the Tribune that this amounts to around $287 million in cuts, but the agency did not specify what it had to chop.<\/p>\n \u201cAgency leadership will work closely with the legislature to explain the operational impact of not restoring the funding,\u201d TDCJ said in a statement. <\/p>\n Dispute over the number of heat-related prison deaths<\/p>\n Beyond the cost, both sides have sparred over the human toll of insufficient air conditioning in Texas prisons.<\/p>\n