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.