AUSTIN, Texas — Elected officials, community members and advocates gathered on the south steps of Texas State Capitol on Tuesday afternoon to call for an emergency special session addressing the lack of air conditioning at Texas prisons.
The rally attendees said prisoners are facing dangerous conditions in cells across Texas.
"Temperatures rise above 130 degrees in some of our prisons, and it's inhumane," State Rep. Carl Sherman (D-DeSoto) said.
Families dropped off letters to Texas Senate offices from loved ones who are struggling to survive in prison. A Texas A&M report shows Texas is one of 13 states that doesn't have universal air conditioning in state prisons. The Texas Tribune reports roughly 70 of the state's 100 prisons do not have air conditioning in most living areas, leaving prisoners to deal with extreme heat. Nine inmates have died so far this year.
The group Texas Prisons Community Advocates (TPCA) is calling for an emergency special session to address the air conditioning situation at the state's prisons. The group stated in a press release that despite the state's budget surplus, "The Texas Legislature failed to allocate any additional funds to address the urgent human rights crisis in Texas prisons."
One study published in the medical journal Jama Network reports roughly 13% of Texas prison deaths could be attributed to extreme heat in prisons without air conditioning.
That is a reality lived by Kristie Williams, whose brother, Tommy McCullough, died at the Goree Unit, a men's prison in Huntsville.
"In the last video visit conversation that we had with him, you can see the exhaustion on him, the sweating, the hotness, just the discoloration of his skin from the heat," Williams said. "The next morning, we received the call from the warden that he was mowing outside and that he had collapsed and he was unresponsive. [He] wasn't able to be resuscitated."
Marci Marie Simmons survived 10 summers in a prison without air conditioning in Gatesville.
"I was watching the ladies around me that had even minor health problems, and they weren't OK. They were falling out, heat-induced seizures, three and four a day," Simmons said.
There was a mock prison cell set up at Tuesday's rally to give people an idea of what it is like to live in prison during the summer.
PHOTOS: Texas Prisons Community Advocates display mock cell at rally
State Rep. Jon Rosenthal (D-Houston) went inside the cell for seven minutes.
"That is oppressive heat. That is suffocating. That is – there is no fresh air in there," Rosenthal said. "Once you stand in somebody's shoes, it's harder to turn your back on them."