TDCJ Prison Heat

This project is an examination of heat conditions recorded in Texas prisons using documents obtained through the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It supports reporting by Lauren McGaughy at KUT/The Texas Newsroom.

The work is a group project under the Media Innovation Group, an experiential learning opportunity for students in the School of Journalism and Media in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. It is funded by the Dallas Morning News Journalism Innovation Endowment.

Indoor logs

January 2025

We have records of indoor temperatures recorded for units without air conditioning from April through September for years 2022 through 2025. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, indoor temps are taken at 3 p.m. every day from April 1 through Sept. 30 at all units that do not have air conditioning. The data was acquired by Lauren McGaughy at KUT/The Texas Newsroom through a public information request to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

For each year, we have 183 total days of indoor temperature recordings.

  • We looked at how many times it reached at least 85 degrees inside these prisons without air conditioning.
    • Each year since 2022, it reached at least 85 degrees inside practically every unit at least once. In only one unit did temperatures not reach 85 degrees inside. link
    • In 2023, in 54 of the 68 units without air conditioning, it reached 85 degrees inside a unit on half the days measured. That’s at least 90 days a year. link
  • It reached 90 degrees inside almost every unit at least once each year; all but three units in 2022, one in 2023 and six in 2025. link
    • In 2023, it hit 90 degrees on half of the days measured in 19 units. link
    • In 2023, 19 of 68 units reached 90 degrees at least half of the days measured. Two units reached 90 degrees for at least 75% of days measured, Segovia in 2023 and Garza West in 2024. Garza West recorded 137 days with temperatures at or above 90 degrees in 2024. link
  • It reached 100 degrees indoors 211 times across all units between 2022 and 2025. Twice, it reached 105 or above. The hottest temperature recorded was the Mountain View unit (later renamed O’Daniel) on June 19, 2023, which reached 106.8 degrees. link
    • It reached 100 degrees inside prisons more than 100 times in 2023. link
  • The Garza West unit comes up often when we look at these temperature thresholds.
    • In 2025 there were only 11 days it did not reach 85 degrees inside the Garza West unit. In other words, 94% of days reached 85 degrees or higher. It reached 85 on 92% of days in 2022. link
    • In 2023, Garza West reached 95 degrees or above indoors 108 times, or for nearly 60% of the days recorded. link
    • In 2023, Garza West reached 100 degrees indoors 46 times. In other words, 25% of days between April and September reached 100 degrees or higher indoors. link

Visualzing temperatures

We wanted to show how many days it reached different temperature breaks, so we counted the days within each range. In this example from 2023, there is a bar for each prison unit, which the colors representing the number of days within each temperature range.

2023 Temperatures by unit

Outdoor logs

McGaughy also used public information requests to obtain outdoor temperature logs kept by Texas prisons. The logs are hand-written and the data could not be accurately pulled through programattic means, so a group of Media Innovation Group fellows transcribed a sample set of logs from each prison, from July 24, 2023 through July 31, 2023.

Here is what we found:

Basics and legibility

May 2025

  • We transcribed 8 days of logs for 82 units, making up about 15,700 rows of data.
  • If we found a row of the data was corrected or there was a question about the legibility, we included a note within that row. We included some consistently-worded notes so we could count them, but also had some more free-form notes when those categories didn’t fit. We tried to be consistent, but variability was inevitable. These facts are based on the last seven days of July 2023.
    • About 15% of the records had notes.
    • About 1,300 records (7.5%) had corrections.
    • About 1,000 records (6.5%) we marked with legibility issues.
  • Of those with notes, we also counted what was at issue.
    • There were about 650 notes concerning the heat index/wind chill column. That column is challenging because it captures two different things (though not at the same time). Some records also include what we determined was a heat risk category category, which we recorded in a separate column.
    • There were about 590 notes about the temperature column.
  • We wanted to see for which units we added notes.
    • More than 60% of the records for the Stevenson unit had notes, and many of those we flagged as “corrections”. However, when you look at the original document, it appears the unit reviews the logs and clears up any legibility issues. i.e. having more corrections could be a positive thing.
    • In some cases we recorded an overall note about the unit as opposed to notes for each individual line. They are printed in browsable form here.

Precautionary measures

August 2025

Here we wanted to find which units should be under heat-related “precautionary measures” based on written data logs, and how that compared to actual Incident Command System activations.

This was challenging because the TDCJ definitions and directives to define if the unit should be in “precautionary measures” are ambiguous and confusing. See the Precautionary measures notebook for a full discussion.

We ended up using the following definition: When temperatures are 105+ degrees or heat index is 113+ for three or more consecutive days.

We use the term “unit day” to describe when any of the 82 units meets a criteria on a single day.

Of our eight days of records from 82 prisons …

  • Seven units met the ICS criteria on some days for a total of 17 unit days, based on the definition given to us by the TDCJ communications department. None of those units had active ICS protocols in place on those days. This count could be low since units could have met protocol in the days before our time period.
  • According to the activation data, there were 24 days in our time period where ICS heat mitigation protocols were put in place. On those activation days, none of these units met the criteria we’ve been given by TDCJ communications based on the weather logs kept by units. That said, half of the activations are within the first two days of our study, meaning they could have met the criteria in the days before our time frame.
  • Out of 656 “unit days” possible (82 units, 8 days), excessive heat conditions (105 degrees or 113 heat index) were reached 127 times. Half of the units reached the criteria at least once. In only 12 of those instances was a unit in active precautionary measures.

There are also 15 “unit days” where there was no heat index values for that day, but the unit did include a heat index “risk category” that was Cat 3 or higher. Those are potentially 113 degrees or greater and would put the day in precautionary measures territory.

Log accuracy vs weather stations

May 2025

To gauge the accuracy of recorded temperature and humidity/heat index we paired each prison unit with a “nearby” weather station so we could compare the temperatures.

  • We don’t have a good match for about 15% of the records. We have some ideas on how to improve this using visualcrossing, but we also found in late 2025 that TDCJ is collecting weather station data based on prisons in automated logs.
  • On average, temperatures are recorded -2.9 degrees lower than the closest weather station.
  • About half of the temperatures are within 2 degrees, and 3/4ths are within 4 degrees.
  • The heat index differences are a little harder because of so much missing data, but we’ve charted them.

Collaborators

This project supports reporting by Lauren McGaughy of The Texas Newsroom public radio collaborative. Christian McDonald served as editor and mentor for the many Media Innovation Group fellows who worked on this project.

2025-2026

Emily DeMotte did the analysis on the indoor temperature logs.

2024-2025

The following students analyzed outdoor logs and weather station data and explored indoor temperature logs.

  • Ali Juell - project lead
  • Pearson Neal
  • Johan Villatoro
  • Karina Kumar

Those transcribing the outdoor logs included:

  • Emily DeMotte
  • Teresa Do
  • Nicolas Pinto
  • Diego Torrealba