Bodies of people who die in custody can be cremated, even when it violates their religion, or be donated to science without consent, finds new report.

Also this hour: A federal judge has ruled that Texas has to accelerate its timeline to install air conditioning in all state prisons by the end of 2029. The judge seemed to suggest the state was slow-playing the installation, which may fit an attitude about prison conditions built around the notion that people in prison are being punished not by doing time, but how they do that time. We discuss that and other observations about the ethics surrounding Texas prisons.

The use of Narcan jumped 51% last year, while overdose deaths remain far above levels in 2021, when the state restricted physical mail to stop the smuggling of prison contraband.

Tennessee officials say they need more high-security facilities for kids who commit crimes. Experts say this approach flies in the face of crime data and research that shows youth prisons are not rehabilitative.

Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, said pepper spray shouldn’t be used on kids at all, especially if the youth is already restrained. “Using it for a kid who is already restrained and not able to injure somebody is absolutely a violation of that youth's constitutional rights,” Deitch said.

A resolution calling for a review is scheduled for a vote Tuesday in the Health and Hospitals Committee of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Advocates, elected officials and faith leaders say a historic 2023 death toll underscores the need for third-party oversight.

Michele Deitch, a University of Texas law professor who has served as a court-appointed monitor herself, said she’d understood the new group of leaders overseeing Rikers Island to be a collaborative one. “Of course, it's going to work better when it's more collaborative, which is why this one so surprised me,” she said.

Jails that routinely fail inspections can be referred to the attorney general — but the Department of Corrections hasn’t done so in over a decade.

The US prison population is aging rapidly, and incarcerated seniors are not getting the care they need.

“A secure cell is the basic building block of jail safety,” said Michele Deitch, a corrections policy expert at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied jail conditions. “If you don’t have that, everything else becomes more difficult.”