In January 2025, back-to-back polar vortexes unleashed subzero temperatures on much of the country, breaking thousands of daily snow and cold records.
Ten inches of snow was dumped on New Orleans in late January, which also broke records for the city. Baton Rouge recorded its coldest temperature (7 degrees) in nearly 100 years. And across the Southeast, snow blanketed typically sunny states, including parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
These extreme low temperatures were acutely felt in prisons. Some units or cells had broken windows that let cold drafts in. Others had to deal with broken hot-water pipes in showers or sinks. At some facilities, the heating systems were inconsistent or broken.
In an effort to examine one of the most urgent issues facing prison today, Prison Journalism Project published a special project on extreme winter cold in prisons, called “What Extreme Cold Feels Like in Prison.”
The project, which ran in February, featured reporting from 27 writers across 17 states, and demonstrated how PJP can quickly collect reporting from prison journalists across the country to tell timely, essential and affecting stories. As with our “Summer Heat in Prison” special project, in 2024, PJP relied on fill-in-the-blank reporting prompts so reporters of varying literacy levels could participate in the information gathering.
Because many people behind bars have been denied meaningful education opportunities, 70% of the incarcerated population in the U.S. are functionally illiterate, meaning they have a fourth-grade reading level or below. That’s why we devised this Mad Libs-style method of reporting. This way, people of varying reading and writing abilities can contribute valuable observations and lived experiences that would otherwise be overlooked.
In this project, we used the following prompts:
- I know it’s too cold in my cell when ____.
- To keep us warm in winter, the prison provides ____. It usually has to be ____ temperature for them to provide this. If we had more access to ____, it would make winter more bearable.
- The coldest temperature I remember experiencing in prison was ____ during ____ (month/year). I remember how cold it was because ____.
- I can buy warm clothes or warming products from the commissary, including ____ (item, and exact price) and ____ (item, and exact price) and ____ (item, and exact price). (Please check the most recent commissary price before answering this question).
- If I could have one winter item from the outside, it would be ____. It would make a difference because ____.
- The best way I’ve found to warm up is ____. And the most creative way I’ve seen others warm up is ____.
- My most valued possession is ____ during the winter because ____.
- The winter affects my body and mood in different ways. For example, my body feels ____ and my mood is ____ and ____. I feel ____ and ____.
IMPACT
We sent close to 100 submission requests and ended up publishing 27 writers across 17 states. Forty-one percent of the writers were Black, with a little more than half of writers people of color. About 25% were women or transgender women. The response rate was about 30% higher than our typical rate of 10% to 20%.
“What Extreme Cold Feels Like in Prison” has been one of PJP’s top 10 performing stories and our top-performing post on Instagram so far in 2025.
LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE
As we continue to prove the success of this model, we intend to actively employ our fill-in-the-blank reporting method in other stories and projects and as a tool for edit coaching.
We also intend to stay on top of the ongoing impact of climate change on prisons with projects each winter and summer.
Some questions we are exploring:
- How can we apply this model to incorporate more voices in an examination of other urgent topics affecting the lives of people behind bars?
- How do we continue to refine fill-in-the-blank storytelling as a tool for coaching?
- What must happen in order to move a writer from Mad Libs-style reporting to forming their own narratives from scratch?
