By Bob Ray Sanders
bobray@star-telegram.com
Many readers of this newspaper have made it very clear over the years that they really don't care what happens to people in prison.
Their latest outcry came a couple of months ago when I made an appeal to donate fans for indigent prisoners who are suffering in penitentiaries that can become furnaces during Texas summers.
"They're behind bars to be punished," is the usual retort. "They ought to suffer."
And, of course, there's always the admonishment: "You should spend more time thinking about the victims than a bunch of criminals."
I do think about victims, and I've spent a lot of time covering their stories. But I will not stop seeking fair treatment of those who are incarcerated. After all, society demands justice, not persecution; humane treatment, not barbarism.
Two crucial findings last month -- one by a court and one by a newspaper -- have put the focus back on the Texas prison system and the unbearable heat conditions in the vast majority of its 111 penitentiaries.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, ruling in the case of a 64-year-old former inmate, said that exposing inmates to extreme temperatures "can constitute a violation of the Eighth Amendment."
The Eighth Amendment prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment.
Eugene Blackmon, a minimum-security inmate with high blood pressure, served three years in the Garza East Unit in Beeville, The Texas Tribune reported. The Texas Civil Rights Project sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on his behalf in 2008.
"For more than 50 consecutive days that summer, according to court documents, temperatures inside the unit reached levels that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association considers cautionary or dangerous," the Tribune said. "Temperatures inside the prison, Blackmon's lawyers said, reached a heat index of 130 degrees."
The New York Times reported that 10 inmates housed in Texas prisons died from heat-related causes last summer in a 26-day period in July and August.
"All of them were found to have died of hyperthermia, a condition that occurs when body temperature rises above 105 degrees, according to autopsy reports and the state's prison agency," the
Times noted.
The news article said a total of 12 prisoners had died of heat-related causes since 2007, including one man whose body temperature was 108 degrees. The inmates did have other factors contributing to their deaths, including several with hypertension and heart disease.
It was after hearing stories of heat-related deaths that Burleson residents Kenneth and Lois Robison with Texas Citizens for Rehabilitation of Errants (TX-CURE) started the indigent fan project. It's a program I have supported for many years.
The Robisons' son, Larry Robison, was executed in 2000 for the 1982 murder of Bruce Gardner, one of five people killed in a brutal attack near Lake Worth.
The organization made its final fan purchase for the summer at the beginning of the month, said project coordinator Dorothy Deen.
With the help of many
Star-Telegram readers -- those who do care about the humane treatment of prisoners -- 570 fans were provided to indigent prisoners this year, Deen said. She noted that 150 inmates who qualified to receive a fan remain on the waiting list.
"I received a thank-you letter from a prisoner who described to me how he had stood each day in a circle with other inmates, and all of them were praying that this man would get a fan from TX-CURE," Deen said. "His fan had just arrived, and he said that God had answered their prayers."
The fan project has been a godsend for almost 7,000 prisoners over the last 12 years. If one death is prevented because an inmate received a $20 fan, our efforts have been worth it.
Oh, I know, there are still those of you sitting in your air-conditioned homes and offices who are saying, "Who cares? Let them suffer."
Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.817-390-7775Twitter: @BobRaySanders
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