Feedback From the Chronicle’s Prison Heat Series: Pleading for prisoners’ lives

For his three-part series on the dangerous heat in Texas prisons that lack air conditioning, Brant Bingamon spoke with and fielded messages from over a dozen prisoners, former prisoners, and their family members. But there are 95,000 people housed in those hot prisons and too many stories to tell. These letter excerpts represent just a few of the accounts of people who reached out in response to Brant's pieces.

Dear Editor,

My husband is at the Ferguson Unit. He said that during this heat they are required to remain fully clothed in their pants and shirts, not being able to find some relief by at least going shirtless. Some prisoners have mini fans about the size of your palm, maybe a little larger. These fans are the most expensive item through the commissary, costing the inmate $30. The heat gets to a certain temperature where the fans are just blowing hot air. There are several inmates who have ended up in medical due to being overheated. Several of those instances were because the inmate had underlying health issues not allowing them to adjust to the heat. Other inmates cut their wrists or cause self-harm in order to go to medical to get out of the excruciating heat. The bars, toilets, and beds, things that are made of metal, become so hot to the touch, they practically burn themselves. They get to the point where they don't want to touch anything. The cement the units are made of hold the heat in so at night when you think they might get relief, they don't.

Angela Gonzalez

Dear Editor,

I have a son incarcerated at the Memorial Unit in Rosharon, Texas. He emailed me and said he has a heat rash all over his body. It's very painful. I don't know if it's a heat rash or fungus but he says he's going to try and go to medical. ... He says you can feel the heat you're breathing and it hurts your throat and chest. He says he knows that prayer is what got him through. He advised me the employees are not showing up. There was only one employee escorting them. Employees are hard to come by these days it appears. With the heat, nobody wants to work there.

Linda Hayes

Dear Editor,

Some of the men in my husband's dorm have received disciplinary cases for not having a T-shirt on while the outside temperature has been from 100-108, meaning inside those metal buildings the temperature is anywhere from 110-120 or above. They have provided fans, but it is a metal building, with the sun on it from sunup to sundown, so it's absolutely miserable for them.

Lorie Dorpinghaus

Dear Editor,

My husband is currently incarcerated at Beto Unit. He called me this morning and mentioned that the unit is short-staffed and is having trustees hand out mail to inmates. He has also said that they get water but by the time it gets to inmates it's warm. Also when inmates are on K2 and laying in their bunks, they're laying in their own vomit if they puke. It's very hot. He said yesterday, July 17, they had three guys pulled out on a stretcher.

Traci Doyle

Dear Editor,

Please help! [My best friend], 56, is in the Lane Murray Unit in a wheelchair with [multiple sclerosis] and asthma, among other health conditions. Dizzy, throwing up, hands and arms numb and tingling, unable to wheel herself anywhere, no one can push her without getting in trouble. They are lying! She's suffering from heat exhaustion. Phone calls to everyone there have done no good. It's been several days since I heard from her. I don't know if she's alive or dead. Please help her if you can.

Barbara Minsch

Dear Editor,

My husband is at the Hughes Unit and has served 26 years. When he called me he said the fans blow hot air, so he lays on the cement floor to try and stay cool, or takes four showers a day to try and keep from feeling too hot. He is 60 years old, so he tries to think of ways to survive, because he has known some of the guys personally that have died from the heat. The medical and the officer's quarters are the only air conditioning areas.

Anonymous

Dear Editor,

My voice trembles as I recount the anguish my daughter shared with me in a recent phone call. "Mom," she said, "I didn't sign up for a death sentence, but I fear I won't make it." These words pierced my soul, leaving me feeling utterly powerless. As a mother, my mind races with worry, my PTSD intensifying with each passing day. The anxiety eats away at me, depriving me of sleep and leaving me sickened by the thought that my daughter's life hangs in the balance. My agony is not mine alone; it is shared by mothers, fathers, siblings, and friends alike, all united by the common thread of love and concern for those incarcerated.

Amy Broadnax

Dear Editor,

I, myself, have spent time on the Lane Murray Unit. Praise God, I was released July 25, 2017, and didn't have to try to make it throughout all of August that year. TDCJ is definitely lying by saying heat-related illnesses aren't causing deaths to rise in summer months. At one point in my dorm it reached 124 degrees. Respite is nice, but they lie to the public saying offenders can stay as long as needed. They pushed us back into the heat.

Melody Weise

Dear Editor,

I am a former inmate and was housed there at Lane Murray in the year 2016. It was so miserable during summer, it was so hot. We lived in aluminum, like what they keep cattle in. Aluminum keeps heat so if it's 102 outside you can imagine how hot it is inside. Everything is hot and stays that way. I remember barely getting relief until 4 or 5 in the morning, just for it to start all over again two hours later. They say that it's an air-conditioned unit but the air conditioners are in the vestibule and the education building. Inside the F-dorms, F-1 2 & 3, along with the housing unit, all that was given were great big fans that just would circulate hot air. It was unbearable. It's inhumane to have people living that way. It's sad. I remember one time telling my friend, "If you would have met me out in the free world and would have told me the stories of the things that go down in here, I would tell you that you were lying."

Angie Silvas

Read Brant Bingamon’s three-part series on dangerous heat in Texas prisons.

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