‘The best part is the ice cream’: What summer in prison is really like

Skoop is babe.net’s prison correspondent. She’s currently incarcerated in SCI-Muncy, a maximum security women’s prison in Pennsylvania. She loves flirting, cooking and trap music. She’s also a writer – she sends her columns to us by letter. Her nickname, as she likes to say, is Skoop because she scoops up all the girls. She’s here talk about what her life on the inside is like — and if you’re smart, you’ll listen.

This week she writes about summer in prison.

In the winter there are a lot of holidays that tend to have me a bit depressed, because I wish I was home with my family on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. So I’m a little more stress free in the summer. But it depends on who you ask if summer is better than winter in prison.

I’ll start with the activities you can do in the summer. In the yard, you can pick what you want to do – a lot of us like to play softball. Every weekend there’s a bunch of us who play, mainly on the weekends because we’re off of work and school… the field is pretty shitty but you make it work. Especially when that’s all we have.

I’ll either play softball or volleyball. Again the volleyball court is trashed – weeds are grown on the court, nobody keeps up with it and they have a department where they are supposed to keep it up, but they don’t. One year, we all volunteered to pull weeds, draw a line, and fix it up but their plastic shovels didn’t work. When we asked for the activities department to fix it, nothing was ever done, so it’s shitty to play in.

Another thing we look forward to is ice cream! You order your tickets and buy and eat your ice cream in the yard only on the days they sell it – Wednesday evening, Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and evening. This is the time that the yard is packed with people. The lines are so long you would think you’re in line for Black Friday. This is the only time half the campus is outside, just for ice cream. Everyone wants ice cream. This is a summer time special – they don’t offer ice cream in the winter time.

Another plus for us is yard in the evenings, which is from 6:45 pm to 8:30 pm. Once it’s time to turn the clocks backwards, that’s when we can start going to yard in the evenings, which is nice for all of us. Most of us work or go to school, so it’s nice to go outside in the evening just to get some air, do something for a little bit, and enjoy the nice weather while it lasts. We don’t have night yard in the winter because it gets dark real early.

What I hate in the summer is the gnats! They are vicious up here. I’m constantly eating them. They invade your space as soon as you go outside. You have to make sure you shake off your clothes before entering your cell, that’s how bad they are. Another big issue in the summer – if you live in an air conditioning unit – it’s freezing in the summer and blazing ass hot in the winter. Ass backwards, right? The temperature is too low in the summer and too high comes wintertime. The good part is in winter, your handwashed clothes dry fast. Summer they can take two days if you don’t have a fan on your clothes.

I do think the weather changes people’s mood. People (including myself) get cranky and bitchy in the summer. When it’s too hot, people get more irritable. I see a lot more arguments in the summer rather in the winter. If you think about it we are all women inside Muncy with different menstrual cycles. A bunch of women at one place is called drama, drama, drama. I know I tend to get cranky in 90° weather. I get to the point where I do not want to be bothered until I cool off.

Summer inside is what you make of it. It can be worse, so you do what you can. Summer time goes by fast because you can do more so you’re busy. It’s the same out in the real world. Gain weight in the winter and lose it in the summer because we’re more active. It’s just time to stay cool and be busy!

More from Skoop:

● Introducing Skoop, babe’s prison correspondent — reporting from a high security women’s facility

● A Week In A Pennsylvania Maximum Security Prison On A 19 Cents An Hour Salary!

● How do you celebrate your birthday when you’re locked up in prison?