THE PRISON ECONOMY

"Wow! Look at that," I explode to Officer Richardson. "Money! I almost forgot what it looks like." Officer Richardson was taking $5 out of his pocket as we rode the elevator to the basement kitchen where he would be buying a special meal prepared by one of the officers who runs the area. Her cuisine was known to be so superior that officers ponied up for the treat.

By now you've probably guessed that legal tender was not something an inmate saw often (or ever) in prison. And there's a good reason for that. There is no money in prison. But that doesn't mean there wasn't a robust throwback economy which operated more or less like an intricate barter system.

That economy was based on the mackerel pack, a repulsive concoction of cooked mackerel and soybean oil encased in a soft package the likes of which I have only ever seen in a prison. Not once have I found this food on the shelves in a supermarket. And for a good reason. I can't imagine anybody would want to buy that dog shit anywhere but behind bars.

The mackerel pack was available in commissary for the grand price of one whole dollar. And thus, it became the de facto dollar in all barter transactions. The second form of legal tender was a Chicken of the Sea 2.5 ounce tuna soft pack. This was actually a much more palatable snack in a pouch - and one you can buy in the supermarket. At $2, it was a little on the expensive side. But it was solid white tuna and comparable in quality (if not price) to what you might buy on the outside. In fact, most commissary items could be used as legal tender in varying degrees depending on how much it cost and how desirable it was on the open barter market. 

Here's  how all this worked and the manner in which I managed to enter prison with $300 on my books and leave with more than four times that amount. I know. It sounds like a neat trick. But in fact, my little stash was moderate compared to some others.

When I scored a job in the kitchen (mostly by badgering my counselor for work and finally hitting him up on the very day my medical clearance came through so the position was open), Tango congratulated me on the victory. 

"You can make a lot of money in the kitchen," was his claim. Making money was not my intention. Rather, having something to do to break the profound ennui and eating better were my motivations. But I soon discovered what he was talking about.

In virtually all prisons, inmates who work in the kitchen eat better. And that's because we're given and/or have access to food while working, and are additionally given food to take up to the unit after we're done with our jobs. 

If you didn't want that food, it could be sold to another inmate who preferred the superior offering we brought up. And given that it was almost always chicken (a very popular dish in prison), there was rarely a shortage of customers for that food.

"Yo Merse! What you got?" guys would ask the moment I entered the unit - even as the kitchen officer who didn't like us selling "her food" watched on. I was not one to hold an auction. I figured offering a fair price to a dedicated customer was the way to go. Price gouging inmates could be a bad policy.

In fact, many kitchen workers negotiated "contracts" for their food. In other words, for a certain dollar amount, that inmate's food would go to his customer for a designated period of time. How that fee was paid was as interesting as it was nuanced.

This is the way it worked: Most nights I would sell at least some of the food I brought from the kitchen. Considering how much I ate while I was down there...and how much they gave us to take up...it would have been ridiculous to eat all that food. At least for me. Other inmates did consume massive amounts of food. I was not one of them.

I'd negotiate my price. Say $5 or $10 - depending on what I had to offer - and would accept mack packs, tuna, mac and cheese, peanut butter, soap and really, almost anything I thought I could sell at a later date and attach the commissary price to its value in payment. When I amassed $100 in commissary items (which would be a combination of stuff), I would then offer it to another inmate for $80 in cash.

So how did he pay me if there was no cash in prison? Aha! He would take my name and reg number, call a family member or friend, and tell that person to Western Union or Cash App $80 to my account. It only took a few hours or a day at most for the money to post in my account - which I could check on the unit computers to see how much money I had on my books. And as soon as I saw the deposit, I'd haul over my customer's loot and finish the transaction. And that's how I started my bid with $300 and finished it with $1300. 

As kitchen workers went, my hustle was moderate because I didn't steal (or I barely stole). But most criminals who worked the kitchen beat were outrageous when it came to concealing food and bringing it up to the unit. They'd steal anything that wasn't nailed down - and a lot of stuff that was - and then sell it upstairs. Garlic, pepper, cooking oil, liquid soap, onions, and peppers were just the beginning of what was available and in demand on the black market.

Personally, I thought all the theft was atrocious. But when I considered that my monthly pay for 36 hours a week was $11.60, I could hardly blame the boys for being so sticky-fingered. Six cents an hour is a little insulting - even for a convicted criminal.

The kitchen hustle was just one of many in prison. Virtually everybody offered some service or product for barter. We had several barbers who charged between $2 and $4 for a haircut. One guy sewed anything you could imagine. Pillows, water bags for weight lifting, clothing etc. He would iron your khakis for visiting day. Really anything you could think that a tailor would do, he'd offer the other inmates as a service.

One guy fixed headphones. Many cooked elaborate meals or cakes and sold them to less culinarily-blessed types. Others brewed liquor for sale. An astounding amount sold contraband for extra cash. Some guys didn't use their 150 phone minute allotment every month. So they'd sell their available phone minutes at a premium. Other inmates who didn't use all their commissary, sold their allotment at a premium to other guys who just needed more than the prison would allow them to buy in any given time period.

My predecessor on the inmate companion coordinator job made a deal with me which bartered shifts for kitchen food. I'd bring him food from the kitchen and in exchange, he'd guarantee me all the suicide shifts I wanted. (The inmate companion coordinator did the scheduling.) The hustles were endless and amazingly creative - as you might have noticed.

There was even a term for guys who had no outside resources and had to rely on a hustle to get money for commissary and/or obtain the items they wanted. It was called "living off the land."

Inmates also earned money (not cash - but money on their books) by working at the prison. But nobody got rich off those fucking jobs. Prison work, which in theory was required of all prisoners, paid sinfully low wages. As I said, the kitchen workers earned 6 cent per hour. On suicide watch, I made 40 cents an hour as a sentenced inmate with an education. Pretrial guys were earning 12 cents an hour. Skilled type laborers (electrician, plumbing, carpentry) maxed out at about $70/month. I believe the full time librarian was the highest-paid at $122/month. Whatever the compensation, it was embarrassing. Working (at least for me) wasn't about making money (though I did turn it into a game of sorts). It was about passing the time. 

In fact, one day an especially lazy inmate came up to me and said "You could write a book about how to do your bid." And what he was saying was "I'm impressed with how much you work and how you effectively make the time pass." No argument there.

When all is said and done, an inmate is given what's on his books in the form of a debit card when he leaves the prison. The irony in my case was that instead of going home after getting released from federal prison, I was forwarded to a city jail because a state bureaucrat didn't know how to compute a concurrent sentence (or spell the word "concurrent" which he or she spelled "cuncurrent" on the paperwork). 

As a result, the prison told me that the money on my books would follow me to Rikers Island (where I was going next). It is now more than 3 months later. And after dozens of phone calls, faxes and emails, I still don't have that money! It's apparently lost in the system. MCC says call Rikers. Rikers says call MCC. And back and forth I go like a ping pong ball. Such is the bureaucracy rife with incompetent individuals earning a paycheck and getting all the perks afforded governmental workers who do a shitty job - at a shitty job. But more about that later.

Well anyway...there's your prison economy. Rich, varied, nuanced and creative are just four adjectives I'd use to describe it. Criminals will find a way - especially when an idle mind is the devil's workshop. And in prison, there is surely no shortage of idle minds or devils.