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Texas inmates being "cooked alive" without AC

I think this has to qualify as “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”.

If all the inmates joined in a class action suit, the settlement could be so huge, the state would recognize that it would have been cheaper to just air conditioned the damned prisons.
 
MamboDervish said:
I think this has to qualify as “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”.

If all the inmates joined in a class action suit, the settlement could be so huge, the state would recognize that it would have been cheaper to just air conditioned the damned prisons.
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Agreed. It has to be sufficient for the GOP in the state into poverty. If they have no money, they can cause no trouble.
 
Diomedes said:


Looks kind of draconian to be honest.

I'm sure some of them are innocent also...like Michael Morton.

Also...who is going to want to work in these kind of conditions?
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Absolutely disgusting. Prisoners have the right to humane treatment. Do better, Texas.
 
Phys251 said:
Absolutely disgusting. Prisoners have the right to humane treatment. Do better, Texas.
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Prisons are not country clubs. They aren't intended to be fun. The people locked up are locked up because they have been convicted of a crime, many of them violent crimes.
That said, if it's 110 degrees in the jail there is a problem. I wonder why you build a jail without A/C? Do they also not have heat? The answer is certainly to install A/C although I would say just at what temperature to run it is open for debate. I run mine at 68-69 most of the time, my mother-in -law liked her home at 73. I had an uncle who wouldn't think about turning it below 75.
I loved the ladies shirt, "We are not defined by our record". Perhaps but you are defined in part by you behavior and actions.
Fix the air.
 
Integrityrespec said:
Prisons are not country clubs. They aren't intended to be fun. The people locked up are locked up because they have been convicted of a crime, many of them violent crimes.
That said, if it's 110 degrees in the jail there is a problem. I wonder why you build a jail without A/C? Do they also not have heat? The answer is certainly to install A/C although I would say just at what temperature to run it is open for debate. I run mine at 68-69 most of the time, my mother-in -law liked her home at 73. I had an uncle who wouldn't think about turning it below 75.
I loved the ladies shirt, "We are not defined by our record". Perhaps but you are defined in part by you behavior and actions.
Fix the air.
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Just to clarify, you do support at least some A/C for prisoners?
 
The Texas power grid has all ot can handle now…….
 
Diomedes said:


Looks kind of draconian to be honest.

I'm sure some of them are innocent also...like Michael Morton.

Also...who is going to want to work in these kind of conditions?
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Air conditioning didn’t exist when the constitution was written and so there can be no argument that AC is a right.

no one in prison is innocent, you only get into prison by being found guilty
 
Integrityrespec said:
Prisons are not country clubs. They aren't intended to be fun. The people locked up are locked up because they have been convicted of a crime, many of them violent crimes.
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are the ones that didn't receive a death sentence suppose to be put in conditions where the weather kills them?

how about if they're white collar criminals?
 
Phys251 said:
^ Supports cruel and unusual punishment. That is anti-American.
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The weather is not a form of punishment, and mechanical refrigeration didn’t exist when the constitution was written so there is no argument the framers considered lack of something that didn’t exist to be “cruel and unusual”
 
CaughtInThe said:
have you heard of the The Innocence Project?
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The far left NGO that exists to let guilty murderers like Julius Jones off the hook? That so called “innocence” project?
 
Sept. 5, 2019

A judge told Texas to put some inmates in air conditioning. Lawyers say prison officials are violating that order.​

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/09/05/texas-prison-air-conditioning-heat-contempt-motion/
The lawyers representing inmates in the long and costly legal battle over a lack of air conditioning in Texas prisons claimed in a court filing Thursday the Texas Department of Criminal Justice continues to jeopardize the lives of some of the nearly 900 inmates a judge ruled must be kept in cool temperatures. And they said the department has violated a lawsuit settlement by repeatedly providing false information to the lawyers about broken air conditioners and stifling temperatures in units housing those prisoners.

In the motion, the lead lawyer for the inmates who sued the state asked a federal judge to find TDCJ in contempt for its failure to keep the inmates named in the class-action lawsuit in cooled housing. Attorney Jeff Edwards also asked a federal court judge to fine the department $150 per day for each of the prisoners kept in what the judge has ruled are unconstitutionally hot temperatures.

The legal drama stems from a lawsuit filed in 2014 by several inmates housed at the Wallace Pack prison near College Station. They claimed, and Ellison later agreed, that keeping them in temperatures that routinely surpassed 100 degrees was cruel and unusual punishment. Ellison also ruled TDCJ had been deliberately indifferent to the potential harm excessive heat could cause to prisoners.

Nearly 75% of Texas' more than 100 prison facilities do not have air conditioning in inmate housing areas, and the department has reported nearly two dozen heat-related deaths since 1998.
 
rhinefire said:
Maybe if they would not be criminals, they would be at work in an air-conditioned building. Sympathy: None
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Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!

I was waiting for this post.
 
rhinefire said:
Maybe if they would not be criminals, they would be at work in an air-conditioned building. Sympathy: None
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Crap attitude. You guys have frail old people in prisons, you have people doing life for pot, you have about 25% of the world's prisoners locked up- their health and safety is your responsibility.
Texas has joined Latin American banana republics and African dictatorships.
Maybe you ought to go medievel- no prisons, just hanging and branding and various degrees of amputation.
 
The criminals are running the Texas penal system. They're ignoring judicial decisions and submitting false reports.
 
EMNofSeattle said:
The weather is not a form of punishment, and mechanical refrigeration didn’t exist when the constitution was written so there is no argument the framers considered lack of something that didn’t exist to be “cruel and unusual”
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The phrase 'cruel and unusual punishment' predates the US Constitution.
 
Phys251 said:
Just to clarify, you do support at least some A/C for prisoners?
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Did I not make it clear? I have little sympathy for people who go themselves into bad situations over and over, but humanity says they should be better cared for. So install A/C and take away the time on the yard.
 
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