A Texas prison cell hit 149 degrees Fahrenheit. Inmates are lying in spilled toilet water on concrete floors just to feel something other than their own organs shutting down. And the state sitting on a $27 billion rainy day fund has decided this is not, in fact, a rainy day.
Jason Wilson Died in a Cell That Hit 107F the Day Before
The family of Jason Wilson has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, according to The Guardian. Wilson was found dead in his solitary confinement cell at the Coffield unit in July 2024. The cell was un-airconditioned. He was locked in it for 23 hours a day. He had obesity-related co-morbidities that were supposed to trigger intensive wellness checks during heat spells.
The night before he died, the officer responsible for his last wellness check of the day did not complete it. His reason, per the lawsuit: he was tired from the heat. The temperature log inside Coffield recorded 107 degrees the day before Wilson's death. The officer was too hot to check on a man who was literally cooking in a box.
The civil complaint, lodged in federal district court in Houston, accuses Texas of cruel and unusual punishment, deliberate indifference, and intentional discrimination. Wilson was denied cool water and regular showers. No one routinely checked on him. He suffered, and then he died. His father Ronnie Wilson, who brought the suit, told The Guardian he had no idea how bad it was until after his son was gone. When he started asking questions, prison staff told him the Coffield unit was known colloquially as the 'glass house' because of the way the sun hammered down on it. A cute nickname for a place that kills people.
More Than 85,000 Prisoners in Cells With No Air Conditioning
Texas has 141,000 prisoners. The Guardian reports that more than 85,000 of them are housed in cells without air conditioning, where internal temperatures regularly exceed 115 degrees Fahrenheit in summer. The highest recorded temperature inside a Texas prison cell has been 149 degrees. That is not a typo. One hundred and forty-nine degrees.
For context, water boils at 212 degrees. Eggs cook at around 144. The state of Texas is running facilities that approach egg-cooking temperatures and calling it corrections policy.
Those aren't just uncomfortable numbers. At those extremes, The Guardian reports, inmates experience physical and mental breakdown. People with underlying health conditions, which describes a significant portion of any prison population, can suffer fatal heatstrokes. And when the water goes out, as it periodically does at Coffield, prisoners sit in sealed cells with no cooling, no hydration, and apparently no officer walking the line. One current inmate named James recently wrote to an outside advocate: 'I was stuck 20hrs with no running water or a toilet. Not one rank walked the line lastnite or even came to resolve the problem.' Those words are nearly identical to messages Jason Wilson sent before he died.
Texas Admits Three Heat Deaths. Denies Everything Since.
TDCJ has officially acknowledged three heat-related inmate deaths in 2023. One of them was Patrick Womack, 50, found unresponsive in his cell in August 2023 with a core body temperature of 106.9 degrees. Since then, the agency claims there have been zero heat-related deaths. Zero. In facilities that hit 149 degrees. With 85,000 people inside who have no air conditioning.
The agency declined to comment to The Guardian on the Wilson lawsuit, citing pending litigation. That is a choice every defendant gets to make. It is also a choice that looks particularly grim when your prisons are currently baking people and you have $27 billion in a reserve fund you have not touched.
Brittany Robertson, an outside advocate for hundreds of Texas inmates, told The Guardian she has been receiving distress calls in recent days from multiple prisoners complaining they cannot get cool water. Anderson County, where Coffield sits, hit 100 degrees or above on 17 out of 30 days last June. Outside temperatures inside a concrete building with no ventilation get considerably worse. What's happening inside those walls right now, this summer, is not a mystery. It is a choice.
The Fix Costs $1.3 Billion. The State Has $27 Billion Banked.
Installing air conditioning across all Texas prisons has been estimated at $1.3 billion. The state's economic stabilization fund, known as the rainy day fund, is currently capped out at $27 billion. The Guardian confirmed both figures. The math here is not complicated.
Accessing that fund requires a two-thirds legislative vote. That is a meaningful threshold, not an impossible one. Texas has passed budgets. Texas has funded things. The mechanism exists. The money exists. What does not exist, apparently, is the political will to spend roughly five percent of a reserve fund to stop prisoners from dying of heat exposure.
Erica Grossman, the attorney handling both the Wilson wrongful death suit and a separate federal action in Austin demanding air conditioning across all Texas prisons within three years, told The Guardian the core problem is that prison authorities keep denying the scale of the crisis. 'You don't get the funding unless you explain to the legislature why you need it,' she said. So the agency refuses to admit the problem, which means it never has to ask for the money, which means nothing changes, which means more people die in glass houses. Neat system.
Two Federal Cases, One Brutal Summer, Still No Action
Texas is not just facing the Wilson wrongful death lawsuit. The Guardian reports that a separate federal court action in Austin, brought by an alliance of advocacy groups, is asking a judge in the western district to order the state to air-condition all its prisons within three years. A ruling in that case is expected within months.
Meanwhile, this summer's heat is already brutal. Anderson County hit triple digits on more than half the days in June. Climatologists project Texas could warm by an additional 5.1 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, per The Guardian. The crisis that is already killing people is going to get significantly worse, on a predictable, documented timeline, in a state that is choosing not to act.
Ronnie Wilson, Jason Wilson's father, put it plainly to The Guardian: 'Too many people are dying. My son was sentenced for what he did wrong, but he didn't get a death sentence. He wasn't meant to suffer like that, like he was slowly being put to death.' He said money isn't the point. He wants accountability. He wants the state to change. He is asking Texas to acknowledge that baking a human being in a concrete box is not a sentence any judge handed down.
The Dingo Take
Here is the thing about the 'tough on crime' crowd: they will tell you that prisoners forfeit their rights when they commit crimes. Fine, let's take that seriously for a second. What crime did Jason Wilson commit that earned him a slow death by heat in a glass box while a guard too tired to do his job skipped the wellness check? What sentence, handed down by what judge, included lying in spilled toilet water because the state of Texas couldn't be bothered to spend five percent of its rainy day fund?
This is not a hard case. This is a state with $27 billion in reserve, a documented body count, a federal court case demanding basic humane conditions, and a prison agency that responds to all of it by declining to comment. The cruelty is not incidental. When you have the money, know the temperatures, receive the distress calls, and still do nothing, the cruelty is the policy.
The federal courts may force Texas's hand before the summer is out. One ruling in Austin could change things fast. But the fact that it takes a federal judge ordering the state to stop cooking its prisoners alive, rather than the state just deciding on its own that 149 degrees is too hot for human beings, tells you everything you need to know about who is running things in Austin and what they think the word 'justice' means.
