Entry #1 – “On Prison Economies”
Prisons and jails have highly active internal economies that function without official currency, instead relying on bartering, in-kind trade, and favors. The dollar is still the nominal currency, but only in defining an item’s basic worth; an item is worth what it costs at the canteen in USD. Items can then be traded accordingly, an item worth $1 can generally be traded for two items worth 50 cents each. That said, canteen prices are not a hard and fast rule, as certain desirable items may be worth more than their canteen price, and other undesirable items may have minimal or no trade value.
Plenty of items circulate within the prison economy that are not available at the canteen, however, and as such have no canteen cost to determine their value. These items could be anything from items from the kitchen to contraband or modified uniforms. For these items, cost is socially defined. In the dorm I spent most of my time in, for example, chicken dinners from the kitchen, which inmates used as ingredients in their own in-dorm meals, were worth about $1, usually payable in food items to replace the seller’s dinner that night. There is no official list of what such items cost, but people can be asked about the value of various items, and deals between individuals can be struck. This can result in a “buyer beware” situation, especially for new inmates or newcomers to a specific prison or dorm, as sellers can attempt to dupe a buyer into paying more than an item is generally worth.
Services, in addition to goods, form a major part of the prison economy. Services can be traded in the form of mutual favors, or services can be traded for goods. I, for example, once had a thermal undershirt with a tear in it. One of the men in my dorm had sewing skills and supplies, and offered to fix my shirt for the cost of 1 lightbulb (used to smoke meth), paid on the next day our dorm was scheduled to visit the canteen. He mended my shirt, I bought the lightbulb at the next opportunity, gave him the lightbulb shortly after buying it, and everyone left happy. In this way, the worth of a particular good or service can be measured in as many as three ways: its worth in goods, its worth in services, and its worth in services and goods combined.
Common services include uniform modifications (such as turning prison uniform pants into shorts), doing laundry or similar menial tasks for another inmate (the prison’s laundry services are often not trusted), and sneaking vending machine food back from the visitation room (accomplished by having your visitor purchase an item from the vending machines, then retrieving a board game, of which several are available, and placing the vending machine item in the board game box, to be brought back to the dorm by the inmate working visitation that day, who must also be paid for his services).
Illegal or illicit services also exist. Sexual favors are traded though, given the prison culture’s unforgiving views towards homosexuality and homosexual acts, such trades are kept well out of public view. Inmates can be conscripted to move drugs from person to person, from dorm to dorm within the same prison, or even between prisons. Hits on individuals, while rare, do occur.
Such buying, selling, and bartering is generally against the rules in prisons. That said, this rule is effectively impossible to enforce as such dealings can always occur out of sight of prison guards (of which there are always too few anyway), meaning that the prison economy exists somewhere between an entirely open secret to the de facto law of the land. In my experience, Correctional Officers (COs) approach this problem in a few ways. Some require inmates to follow the rules in a pro forma fashion and keep deals, even small or inconsequential ones, out of sight of COs. Others are willing to overlook “legal” deals (i.e. deals not involving contraband) happening in public view, as long as “illegal” deals take place out of sight. Some require that only the most egregious of deals be kept out of sight (say, decent quantities of hard drugs) while most deals, even “illegal” ones (such as those buying or selling cigarettes) can take place out in the open. Inmates know the expectations of each CO, and behave accordingly. The middle path, in my experience, is the most common. When I traded my chicken dinners for instant ramen soups, I did so out in the open, regardless of which CO was on duty. When I paid for a mended shirt with a lightbulb, I did so surreptitiously.
The prison economy by necessity relies upon deals and agreements. Goods cannot necessarily be traded immediately, as inmates have only periodic (usually weekly) access to the canteen. It’s common for one inmate to receive goods from an inmate on a certain day, and then pay that inmate back later, after they have visited the canteen. Services can not always be carried out immediately, there is often a waiting period involved while an inmate prepares to carry out and then completes the service.
This reliance on deals and agreements opens up the possibility that individuals may renege on a deal they have agreed to. Failing to live up to one’s end of a bargain is dangerous, as physical violence is a very possible consequence of such actions, especially when contraband is involved. Other consequences may include a damaged or strained relationship between the people involved in the deal, as well as a potentially severe loss of social standing on the part of the person who reneged on the deal, as they may be publicly identified as someone who cannot be trusted, a reputation which could limit their ability to participate in the economy in the future. Interestingly, the “wronged” party may find themselves in the position of having to confront the individual who reneged on the deal or risk losing social standing themselves, as someone who has been wronged in this way but fails to retaliate could be viewed as soft or weak. In this way social standing and the prison economy are inextricably linked.
There are, I think, graduate theses waiting to be written on the ins and outs of various jail and prison economies. Personally, I have always been interested in the ways that the formation and continuation of prison economies represent manifestations of human nature as well as, perhaps, the economic systems in which they are situated. The prison economy that I experienced and described here is capitalistic and entrepreneurial in nature, but it is of course situated within a very capitalistic society. Do prison economies in countries with socialist economic systems develop and operate along more socialist lines, or does something about the nature of incarceration encourage prison economies to operate more capitalistically? What about prison economies situated in dictatorial countries? Could a communist prison economy ever exist?
Regardless, I’m fascinated by what the existence of prison economies says about human nature and the human spirit. These economies do not have to exist for survival purposes, no inmate (at least in America) would starve if their prison economy were to suddenly disappear. But these economies do exist, ubiquitous across prisons and jails, as inmates, seemingly quite naturally, seek to engage in enterprise to sustain and enrich themselves. That’s not to suggest, of course, that these economies are shining bastions of economic equality and fairness. Dirty dealing is commonplace, backs get stabbed (mostly figuratively, sometimes literally), and manipulation occurs, but that is true of even the world’s most developed economies. And, just like in these developed economies, honest enterprise and fair dealings are also commonplace, even if the deals in question sometimes involve goods or services that are not strictly legal.
At minimum, I believe that the existence of prison economies shows (or at least suggests) that people, even those who have committed crimes that legally merit their being locked away from society, naturally want to engage in work and enterprise, and will do so under even harsh and hostile conditions. This trend, I think, should serve as a reminder about the nature of incarcerated individuals. For all their failings they are not, for the most part, bums who enjoy leeching off the state, but rather enterprising individuals who form and maintain active economies using the goods and services available to them, creating economic worlds in miniature, no less vibrant than the larger, “free” economies inside which they are situated.