> At the same time prison shouldn't be deadly. 85F versus 110F is the difference between uncomfortable and death.

Fully agreed. There absolutely should be air conditioning in prisons in Texas. We need to preserve prisoners lives and health using all reasonable means so that they can receive their just punishment via their sentence.

Of note, however, there are /schools/ in Texas that lack working air conditioning due to mismanagement and underfunding, which I find a far more egregious and wrong circumstance.

> The problem is this doesn't really seem to have any relation to the punishment. In the US we love to think that beating someone to a pulp has a strong effect on their future actions that lead to the beating but redactivism rates do not show any strong correlations here at all. Things like education, living conditions, and wealth are far more correlated.

Agreed, punishment does not help with recidivism rates. You're making a rehabilitation argument. That argument might even be reasonable. That is not why prison in the US exists or how they are operated. They are a form of punishment, that is their purpose in our society.