When was the last time you ate an entire pint of ice cream?

For most incarcerated people, the answer is sometime before they were locked up. 

This was true at my Miami prison up until March 24, when nearly everyone received a pint of Little Debbie Star Crunch ice cream, a caramel flavored ice cream.

James McCrae, a wiry, older gentleman, who was sitting on the fold-down seat of his walker, told me the ice cream was “delicious.”

“I got back to the dorm and ate it slowly,” McCrae said.

I asked McCrae, who has been incarcerated for almost 50 years, when he had last eaten an entire pint. 1991 was his answer.

More than 25 years ago, Florida prison canteens, or prison general stores, sold pints of ice cream. Back then, the selection was not limited to simple flavors, such as vanilla or chocolate. They used to sell butter pecan, cookies and cream, Neapolitan and chocolate chip. The prison system also offered half-gallon tubs of sherbet in several different flavors. 

But in the years since, the selection dwindled. Now, ice cream sandwiches, name-brand Chip Arounds and Powerade ice pops are the only frozen treats available in most Florida prison canteens. 

However, people in the state’s incentivized prisons, like mine, receive greater privileges, including a few special kinds of ice cream available twice weekly. For about the past two years, we’ve been offered a small cup of chocolate or vanilla ice cream, a Klondike Bar knockoff (cleverly called a “Yukon Bar”), or a Chip Around knockoff (two chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream in the middle, rolled in chocolate chips). These are made by Blue Bunny, and they’re good. I won’t deny the greatness of ice cream, no matter the brand or simplicity. 

But entire pints of ice cream was a new thing for us. And, as we were quickly reminded, eating all that ice cream in one sitting is no easy task. That’s 760 calories and 50% of my daily fat content in a single food item. But I had no choice. I don’t have a freezer to preserve the dessert for later snacking, and I’m not about to toss away uneaten ice cream. I had not had a pint in 13 years.

Cory Sivik said eating a lot of ice cream reminded him of childhood. Two things impressed him most about our gift: “It was a pint — and not just vanilla or chocolate, but something special,” Sivik said. “And they weren’t hardasses about it. They let us leave with it. They were casual.”

Our prison system rules dictate that all food issued in the dining hall remain in the dining hall. When caught transporting food back to the dormitory, residents earn a rebuke and the confiscated food is typically thrown out. But this time, residents openly carried their pints back to the dormitories amid an unusual calm from the guards.

Our prison’s Aramark food service director told me the ice cream pints were not a donation to the prison. The prison, however, was able to buy them at a good price point, he said. “You’re going to have it again next week, and will until they run out,” he said. 

Don Carter will be released from our prison in October. He approached the question of when he had last eaten a pint of ice cream with a look of mischief. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten an entire pint of ice cream, and I worked at Dairy Queen,” Carter said. “However, I wish they would hand out parole instead of ice cream.” 

My bunkmate James Cross had two pints — one he brought back from the dining hall, and another he traded for. After eating the first pint, I asked when he had last eaten a pint of ice cream. “About a million years ago,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes. He tore the plastic seal off the second pint and dug in.

Cross wasn’t the only resident who ate more than one pint. Roberto Ramon is a brusque, older Cuban resident who speaks little English. Through a translator, he told me he ate three pints.

When I asked Ramon if he was concerned about the health impacts of eating three pints — just shy of 2,300 calories — he shook his head. “Medical is free … if it’s an emergency,” he said. 

Ramon then recited what he said was a Cuban saying. My translator paused to get it right: “If someone dies from their own pleasure, may their death taste like glory.”