Hundreds of Deaths in Texas Prisons Caused by Extreme Heat
Those in custody are our responsibility. Prison puts a convict entirely in our care. Or peril. Some felons can vote. Some can not. I don’t expect 72 F in a heat wave. But is cool enough to survive too much to demand?
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In the dozens of Texas prisons that don’t have air conditioning, new research shows that 13 percent of deaths during the six hottest months every year from 2001 through 2019 were likely due to extreme heat. The study, which was published last week in the academic journal JAMA Network Open, is the first epidemiological evidence that the lack of air conditioning in a large proportion of U.S. prisons is substantially increasing the risk of death for those incarcerated. It also suggests that over 250 Texans lost their lives over the past two decades because of the state’s failure to mitigate indoor heat.
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