Lambda Legal has settled with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in the case of Passion Star, a transgender woman who claimed prison officials didn’t protect her from sexual and physical abuse while incarcerated in male prisons.

From The Texas Tribune:

The State of Texas may soon close some of its state-run juvenile prisons, reports The Houston Chronicle.

The juvenile prisons have been the focus of controversy in recent months, and the newly installed executive director of the beleaguered Texas Juvenile Justice Department hopes to change that image.

Yesterday, HPPR reported a story about rampant abuse and neglect in Texas’s juvenile prisons.

Today, The Texas Tribune is reporting that inmates in more than 30 of Texas’s adult prisons may not have been provided with adequate heating during the brutal cold spell that recently blanketed the state.

The recent resurgence of Texas oil markets is causing some Texas prison guards to leave their jobs for the more lucrative work in the oilfields.

As The Houston Chronicle reports, in the last year alone, the state prison system has seen a remarkable 28 percent turnover rate.

A new report finds that the Texas prison populace has been growing smaller, ever since reforms were instituted ten years ago.

The death of an inmate at the Clements Unit outside of Amarillo is being investigated as a homicide, reports The Amarillo Globe News. The prisoner was initially taken to the medical clinic after an altercation with his cell mate, but medics who treated the man later said they believed he had been the victim of starvation and neglect.

Christmas was made just a little bit brighter this year for some low-income children, thanks to gifts from an unexpected source.

Some of the worst offenders in Texas prisons worked hard this holiday to crochet stuffed animals for needy kids.

The inmates made for a surprising image: These hardened men in their white prison jumpsuits, many of them muscled and heavily tattooed, bent carefully over their yarn and poking away with their crochet hooks.

A database has been made public that reveals the files of over 5,000 people who have died in police custody in Texas, reports The Houston Chronicle.

This week Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office launched an online initiative known as the Custodial Death Report database. This makes readily available the files that a police agency creates when someone dies in custody.

This week the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the death penalty in Texas. Since the U.S. made the death penalty legal again in 1976, Texas has been responsible for more than a third of the prisoners executed in America.

And, as The New Yorker reports, Texas has often put to death prisoners who would have been deemed exempt in other parts of the country due to intellectual disability.

Last week, the Lone Star State concluded a record-breaking gap in executions, reports The Houston Press.

Before last Wednesday, the State of Texas had gone six months without putting anyone to death. That’s the longest stretch without an execution since 2008. Back then, a moratorium had been called while the U.S. Supreme Court considered the legality of lethal injections.

Each US state has its own policies for what books are allowed in its prisons. But, according to quartz.com, Texas goes farther than most in censoring what inmates have access to.

The Texas prison system could slash its operating budget by about $250 million in the next few years, reports The Texas Tribune. The budget cuts come after the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was asked to trim its budget by four percent.

In the period between 2005 and last year, nearly 7,000 people died while in legal custody in Texas, reports The Atlantic.

The deaths had many explanations. Some died from natural causes or suicide. Others died at the hands of other inmates or police or correctional officers.

More than 70 percent of Texas prisons don’t have air conditioning. And that’s not going change anytime soon, reports The Dallas Morning News.

In many prison cells, temperatures can climb higher than 100 degrees. But changing the situation will require the end to a years-long legal battle between prisoner advocates and Texas corrections officials.

Over the past 25 years over 100 men and women were wrongfully sent to prison in Texas, reports The Texas Tribune. To repair the damages caused by these wrongful convictions, those prisoners have been paid almost $100 million in taxpayer money.

A new rule in Texas prohibits prisoners from having any access to social media, reports member station KUT. The order also families, loved ones, or advocates on the outside from maintaining social media accounts on their behalf. Critics say the rule goes too far in censoring inmates.

Texas prisons are filling up with the elderly and the sick. And it’s costing the state a fortune, according to a new in-depth story by The Texas Observer. There are roughly 150,000 inmates in Texas. And more than one in six of those are over the age of 50. These are the most expensive prisoners to keep locked up. Medical and end-of-life expenses add up to some $30,000 for these elderly inmates. In some jurisdictions, housing these older prisoners can cost taxpayers as much as $68,000 per person.