The Prison Economy

One of the things that I find most interesting about prison is its economic system, where there is both a primary (commissary purchases) and a secondary (barter) market.  At the commissary, as you might expect with a literally captive clientele, you see at least a 30% markup.  That price gouging is what has created the secondary market, which I think is really fascinating, especially since it is totally, completely, without a doubt, AGAINST the rules.  This is the definition of a black market, which thrives in prison.

The black market has three facets:  (1) barter, (2) commissary, and (3) currency.  Bartering is mainly used to exchange skills and services.  For instance, because I have access to a typewriter, a guy comes to me to get something typed up, but maybe he doesn’t have anything tangible to offer in trade.  Well, it turns out that he works in the laundry, and I could use a new pillow.  He gets me the pillow, I type up his document, and we’re square.  The only problem is that one of us could get caught using prison property for personal gain, but frankly that’s a minor risk.  After all, I’m allowed to use the typewriter and he’s allowed to hand out pillows, just maybe not in trade.

The commissary black market works a little differently.  In this case, in trade for typing up a guy’s paperwork, he offers maybe two bags of Taster’s Choice instant coffee.  Now I know that the dude in the laundry room loves having a cup of java while handing out linens every morning, so I take the coffee, do the typing, and then swap the coffee bags for my pillow.  While this, too, is a type of barter, unopened commissary items are valuable commodities, especially to those who don’t have any cash to buy them.  Things can go wrong, however, if I don’t have an item that the pillow guy wants.  That takes a little more hustling.  Maybe I’m offered a can of tuna instead of coffee bags.  I don’t decline the offer, but I make a second swap with one of the muscle men workout guys who seek protein 24-7.  If he’s got coffee, we’re good.

Finally, there’s a hard currency black market, too, which on our compound is not cash but postage stamps.  I’ve heard that in some prisons the hard currency is cans of mackerel or radio batteries, but here it’s stamps.  They have to be unused and mailable, because their ultimate worth is that they can actually be used to send a letter.  Stay with me as we follow the next scenario:  I need a pillow and the other guy needs a 4-page document typed up.  I charge him three stamps per page, which is the going rate (and I know I need at least 10 stamps for my pillow, planning to save the other two for a two stamp Coke or a couple letters home).  Everything has its price in postage stamps.

Another twist here is that you pay a different price with either stamps or commissary.  There’s a sort of service fee attached if you go the commissary route.  For instance, in our example, two bags of coffee cost way more than six stamps, but I can charge a premium if I let a guy pay in commissary.  Say you have a guy walking around trying to sell something for 20 stamps (worth $9.40) or $15 worth of commissary.  Sometimes there’s room for negotiation or a combined payment method, such as, “Okay, I’ll do one load of laundry and pay you five stamps for the headphones!”

It seems that barter is your best route when you want something done that you should not be having done.  For example, I wanted to get the scoreboard repaired at the softball field, but the staff couldn’t be bothered.  But when I offered book delivery service and first access to the Wall Street Journal for two weeks to a guy from Facilities, he made up an excuse to check out some tools and repaired the scoreboard, a win-win all around.  (A couple weeks later, the CO asks about the scoreboard, and we all just play dumb, as if we don’t even remember that it was ever broken (playing dumb always works, because the staff assumes we’re all idiots).

Our prison economy runs quite smoothly, though, since we are in a federal prison, you always have to keep an eye open for some former financier running a Ponzi Stamp Scheme!