Democrat disputes $1.2 billion estimate to cool Texas prisons

Urging a Texas House committee to support his bill that would require state prisons to be kept at no more than 85 degrees in the summer, Rep. Terry Canales disputed the prison system's $1.2 billion cost estimate to add air conditioning to all units.

That number seems disingenuously high, Canales told the House Corrections Committee on Thursday, noting that the original estimate to cool the Navasota-area Wallace Pack Unit was $20 million, but the actual cost was $4 million, as part of an agreement to settle a federal lawsuit brought on behalf of inmates.

"Whether they are sincere or sincerely mistaken about how much it costs, I think it is incumbent upon us" to lower dangerously high prison temperatures, Canales, D-Edinburg, said during the committee hearing on his House Bill 936. "If we don't, we are the ones responsible for, in reality, torturing people."

HB 936 would give the Department of Criminal Justice until Sept. 1, 2020, to ensure that temperatures remain between 65 and 85 degrees in Texas prison facilities.

Bryan Collier, executive director of the prison agency, told the committee that the cost estimate was the best available guess to cool the 75 state prisons that lack climate control.

"We don't fluff an estimate. Truly, we believe that's what it would cost," Collier said, adding that, if anything, the actual cost could be higher.

Faced with a large expense with a disputed total, several committee members suggested that a better first step might be an in-depth study of each prisons' needs to better nail down the cost.

Canales argued that cooler prisons would increase safety for guards and inmates and lower health care costs.

Speaking in favor of the bill Thursday, a representative of the union representing prison guards said the heat creates unsafe conditions, with noise from large fans drowning out their radios, the intercom and cries for help from inmates.

Jose Flores, a policy analyst for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, described a summer he spent in a prison unit near Rosharon south of Houston, when he and a bunkmate would take turns sleeping on the concrete floor, in a puddle from their sink, to survive the heat.

"It's crazy, it's twisted, it's sad and it's not who we are," Canales said. "Regardless of what offense these people may have committed, we don't treat animals like this."

There is, however, no money set aside for prison air conditioning in the proposed House budget.