April Barber Scales recalls her 18 summers spent incarcerated without air conditioning at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh — the state’s largest women’s prison — as physically and mentally demanding as she said relief from the grueling heat was hard to come by. She dripped sweat constantly, felt endlessly sticky and even saw people faint from the heat.
“Miserable is an understatement,” she said, describing the sweltering heat. “I mean, prison is miserable, and then when you have 1,000 people that are hot, and then you have attitudes, and then you couple that with the staff with the attitudes for being hot. It’s so much worse during the summer.”
Barber Scales said she was desperate for any way to cool down during the stretches of summer that felt like they would never end…