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.
