Texas Prison Staff Falsified and Defaced Temperature Logs As Heat-Associated Deaths Piled Up In The State: Report

For years, the Texas prison system has been under scrutiny over its handling of high temperatures inside its compounds as heat-related deaths and illnesses have become recurrent. Last year, The Latin Times detailed that the Lone Star State was one of several facing lawsuits over its dangerously hot prisons. Now one of those lawsuits revealed that employees from at least one Texas prison falsified temperature logs, putting staff members and inmates at risk.

The investigation ibegan last August, when U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman expressed doubts over temperature logs at the Mark W. Stiles Unit, a men's prison located 10 miles south of Beaumont, Texas. During the hearing, Judge Pitman called the log "a fabricated document" after records showed that it got no hotter than 79 degrees at the Beaumont prison on a day in mid-July of 2022.

As KUT News reported, the investigation into the falsified logs found prison staff "recreated" logs that were missing or had been "defaced by staff." In one of those instances, prison staff logged temperatures between 58 and 60 degrees on July 31, 2022, when the lowest temperature recorded for that day was 76 degrees, the report noted.

The investigation claims that the warden and other prison leaders likely knew about or even consented to the falsification. The Department of Criminal Justice, on its end, said there was no intent "to mislead or deceive" authorities in terms of actual prison temperatures.

Deaths inside Texas prisons

According to data from the Texas Justice Initiative — an organization dedicated to enhancing transparency and accountability in the state's criminal justice system — there were 874 deaths in custody in 2024. Despite this high number, none of the deaths were categorized as heat-related. Texas has not reported any heat-related fatalities in its prisons since 2012. The state distinguishes between deaths where heat was the primary cause and those where it was merely a contributing factor.

But according to a 2022 study conducted by the JAMA Network, at least 14 prison deaths per year were associated with heat. Furthermore, a Texas Tribune analysis found that at least 41 people had died inside prisons in 2023 during the state's record-breaking heat wave.

Although Texas has not reported a single heat-related death in more than a decade, the Lone Star State has faced its fair share of lawsuits due to high temperatures inside its prisons. Last year, Judge Pitman required Texas to install A/C units inside its prisons in order to maintain occupied areas between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite the lawsuits, KUT News says that two-thirds of Texas' roughly 100 jails and prisons remain without proper air conditioning in housing areas.

High temperatures inside prisons without air conditioning can lead to several health problems, including renal diseases, cardiovascular mortality, respiratory illnesses and suicides.

According to Julie Skarha, a epidemiology researcher at Brown University, said that despite death certificates not listing heat strokes as the official cause of death, her research indicates that many prisoners continue dying from heat-related causes.

"Heat deaths haven't magically stopped," Skarha said last year. "TDCJ has simply stopped reporting or admitting them after the multiple wrongful death lawsuits and national news coverage," she added.