TEXAS PRISONS

Stifling heat has killed inmates and exacerbated employee turnover in Texas prisons. But funding for air conditioning was whittled down in the draft budget released Thursday.

Joshua Keith Beasley Jr. had been transferred from a Texas youth facility to an adult prison despite a long history of suicidal behavior. Five guards and two supervisors allegedly failed to check on him.

Sweltering heat has killed inmates, driven away prison workers and cost taxpayers millions in lawsuits. The House budget would provide air conditioning for 46 prisons, but it’s unclear if the Senate will sign on.

After 21 days, the last of many Texas prisoners to consistently refuse food ended his hunger strike. In letters to The Texas Tribune, two prisoners spoke out on the dire solitary confinement conditions that led them to starve themselves.

Although the number of men refusing food has steadily declined, 38 are still starving themselves to protest Texas policies that often keep prisoners in isolation for years or even decades.

Prisoners have refused food to protest practices that have kept more than 500 people in isolation for more than a decade.

Hundreds of prisoners may participate in the protest beginning Tuesday, the first day of the state’s legislative session. Texas often keeps prisoners in solitary confinement for years or decades.

Gov. Greg Abbott largely remained silent as dangerous conditions caused by a lack of staff persisted at Texas juvenile facilities during the summer.

Texas heat has killed prisoners and cost the state millions in wrongful death and civil rights lawsuits. Prison rights advocates hope a budget surplus next year will finally push lawmakers to invest in air conditioning.

The agency is so understaffed that teens have reported spending up to 23 hours locked in their cells, using water bottles to go to the bathroom. A staggering number have hurt themselves or been placed on suicide watch.

The review comes after Gonzalo Lopez escaped from a prison bus last month. Authorities say he killed a family of five before they found and killed him.

Authorities say Gonzalo Lopez killed a man and his four grandchildren in Leon County. He escaped from a prison bus nearly three weeks ago.

Officials are still trying to piece together how Gonzalo Lopez managed to cut through a metal door and hijack a prison bus Thursday. An extensive manhunt continues in Leon County.

The county is the most populous to embrace the Republican governor’s “catch-and-jail” policy to arrest people accused of crossing the border illegally for state crimes, including trespassing.

Foster had been the getaway driver, not the triggerman, in a killing that first put him on death row. Former Gov. Rick Perry commuted his death sentence to life in prison in 2007.

The latest Texas execution protocols forbid spiritual advisers from praying aloud or touching prisoners as the prisoners are killed. Some members of the high court said they feared overturning the rules would lead to a flood of requests for other religious accommodations during executions.

Defense attorneys have started asking courts to set migrants free because local justice systems, overwhelmed by arrests under Gov. Greg Abbott's border security push, are routinely violating state law and constitutional due process rights.

Officials said immigration authorities weren’t interested in taking migrants who had no criminal conviction into federal custody. But without documentation, at least one newly released migrant soon found himself back in detention.

John Ramirez was scheduled to die Wednesday. His last request to the state had been to let his pastor hold on to him as he died, something the state denied. The high court wants to hear oral arguments on the matter later this year.

After more than three weeks in jail, a trespassing charge against the man was dropped because state troopers shouldn’t have arrested him under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security push. He wound up in bureaucratic limbo for days as federal agencies passed the responsibility for resolving his immigration status.

Border-crossing immigrants are being arrested by Texas troopers on state charges like trespassing, and they’re starting to trickle into a prison emptied to house them.

Legislators in the House and Senate filed matching bills to change state bail practices earlier this week, echoing legislation that failed to pass in the regular session. On Saturday, committees in both chambers approved the bills.

A civil liberties group had tried to delay Hummel's death after reporters were excluded from the state’s last execution.

The prison — Dolph Briscoe Unit in Dilley — will have capacity for about 1,000 people.

At any given time, thousands of Texas prisoners have been approved for parole but not yet released. At least 42 of those people died in the 12 months after the coronavirus first swept the state.

On Wednesday, the state executed Quintin Jones, 41, for the Tarrant County murder of his great-aunt in 1999.

The bill initially approved by the House aims to cool all of Texas’ prisons before 2029. But even if it is signed into law, the lockups will only be air conditioned if lawmakers provide specific funds for installation.