MadLib Journalism to Shed Light on How Excessive Summer Heat Was Experienced in U.S. Prisons

About the Project

The U.S. prison system is acutely vulnerable to the global climate crisis. Rising temperatures and extreme weather events have placed incredible burdens on incarcerated people and those entrusted to their care.

To tackle one of the most urgent issues facing prisons today, Prison Journalism Project  in partnership with The Marshall Project published a special project on summer heat in prison — “From California to Connecticut, Just How Hot Are Our Nation’s Prisons?”

The project featured reporting from 42 writers in 27 states, including many first-time writers. This  marked a huge milestone for PJP. The project’s national scope proved that we could marshall our resources and incarcerated networks to tell a story with broad impact and appeal. And the fill-in-the-blank format of the assignment, designed so reporters of varying literacy levels could respond successfully, was a major innovation, allowing us to significantly expand the conversation.

Over the past four years, working with over 750 writers on more than 2,300 stories, it has become clear to us that most stories published by incarcerated writers in mainstream media tend to be by college-educated writers, who are largely men and overwhelmingly white.

The reality we have been confronting is this: 70% of incarcerated people are functionally illiterate, meaning they have a fourth-grade reading level or below. Putting together a coherent and engaging narrative is nearly impossible without lots of help. That’s why we conceived of fill-in-the-blank journalism. Here are the prompts we used for the summer heat project:

• I know it’s too hot in my prison when __________.
• I can tell the heat is getting to people because I notice that they __________.
• The hardest part about being in prison during a heat wave is __________.
• In a heat wave, the prison lets older people and sick people __________ because they are more vulnerable to extreme heat.
• Sometimes, during a heat wave, the prison gives us __________. I can also buy __________ at commissary for $__________ to help me beat the heat.
• The hottest temperature I’ve seen recorded in my facility was __________ on this date: __________. I remember it because __________.

When we have sent out calls for submissions in the past, the typical response rate has been about 10%-20%. This time, we got about a dozen responses within a few days, which told us that the assignment felt doable.

We sent out a little over 100 submission requests and ended up publishing 42 writers across 27 states. The beginners responded within the parameters of the fill-in-the-blank prompt, while more advanced writers used the prompts as scaffolding and wrote entire stories. Regardless, we saw useful and concrete information in each of them.