Frozen Justice

Through my semi-frozen window, I watch the outside workers slipping across ice-covered snow, spreading red dirt from plastic bags like confetti on a death march.

I'm from Michigan. This is entertaining in the darkest way possible. Male guards stand bundled in ski bib overalls, insulated hats, thick gloves, and heavy coats that reach their knees, directing jacket-wearing women to shovel the accumulation.

I crack open my window just enough to shout instructions into the bitter air: "Scoot it! Push the snow with the shovel! Don't lift it!" Nobody taught these Texas women how to survive subzero temperatures. Five women strain against a food cart destined for solitary confinement, pushing and pulling until it lodges in the snow.

My friends in the hole will eat cold meals today because budget cuts mean the broken food warmer stays broken.

I'm using my portable blow dryer to stay warm, aiming the pathetic stream of hot air at my hands. The neighbors beside me and the cells above all share one electrical breaker. We take turns with our single blow dryer because running two simultaneously will blow the power for all four cells. An hour each. We've become experts at rationing warmth.

Some will argue this is part of the punishment, that we're supposed to freeze in winter and cook in summer, that comfort isn't owed to the incarcerated. Fair enough. Except people don't realize that most Texas prisons, including Murray Unit where I live, consist entirely of detached buildings. We don't move through enclosed hallways or climate-controlled corridors. We step outside into the biting cold wearing only an uninsulated jacket. No hat. No scarf. Just garden gloves we purchased ourselves because the state provides nothing else.

We leave our housing unit and walk outdoors to reach the cafeteria for every meal. We trudge through ice to exchange our laundry. Chapel services require an outdoor journey. The medical clinic sits in another building entirely. Education classes and the library demand another frozen walk. The gym, the mailroom, visitation each in separate structures. We stand in line outside for medication dispensing and commissary purchases, our breath crystallizing in front of our faces while our feet go numb.

Then there are the unpaid jobs that keep this facility operational. Dorm janitors, kitchen workers, maintenance crews, laundry staff, outside workers, we maintain the prison while hypothermia creeps closer. This infrastructure was never designed for extreme weather.

The buildings leak heat through gaps and cracks that nobody bothers to seal. Pipes freeze and burst. Generators fail. The electrical grid strains under demand it was never meant to handle. Our biggest fear is becoming a repeat of 2021, when the Arctic freeze left us without electricity for days. We survived that winter by huddling together, layering every piece of clothing we owned, sleeping in shifts so someone stayed awake to prevent anyone from slipping into unconsciousness.

The state learned nothing. The buildings remain unchanged. The infrastructure stays neglected. The winter gear never improved. The cold doesn't care about guilt or innocence, sentences or crimes. It just penetrates these thin walls and thin jackets with absolute democracy.

But I gotta go because it's our cell's turn to use the blow dryer for an hour!!!