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In prison, the summer heat cooks us inside our cells, causing tempers to flare. If that’s not aggravating enough, every morning, when I’m lying down in my bunk here at Eastern Correctional Facility, a max prison located in Napanoch, New York, I’m forced to hear the same prisoner in a neighboring cell ask the same question to different corrections officers taking the list of our three-times-daily choice of activities. The same fist-clenching answer makes me and other prisoners want to melt down.

“Is the school building open?” asks my neighbor.

“I don’t know,” says the CO. “Chow or rec?”

“Are they at least going to run yard?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. We do

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