Prison Profiteering

They came bounding down the walkway.

“HORTICULTUREEEEEE, HORTICULTUREEEEEE,” they called out.

I hadn’t seen the boys in two weeks. They were eager to be back in class. The previous two classes had been cancelled due to a medical emergency and a statewide lockdown. We were all happy to be back in the classroom.

As the boys come running to class, I stand by the door and “dap” them up. It’s the highlight of my Tuesday, these small check-ins with them. That Tuesday, one student had a huge smile on his face. I asked him what was up. He looked around to see if anyone was listening and leaned in close, “I’m going home tomorrow.” The reason for the secrecy - you don’t want anyone to know when you’re going home. If they know it’s soon, they might get jealous and hurt you or rob you of whatever you have left. Prison can be a dog-eat-dog world.

His news was a welcome victory. I’d miss him; he was a great student even though I hadn’t known him that long. I was certainly happy to see him go and asked him his plan. He whispered that he was going to live in Covington. I told him that we had a network of support in Covington and could help him get a job if needed. He promised to reach out if he needed help.

The next student to walk into the classroom was in a sour mood. I asked him what was wrong.

“They cancelled store.”

“Ouch,” I said. Even I knew that cancelling store was a big deal.

For the uninitiated, “store” is the prison’s commissary. Every prison has one. Basically, each inmate has an account through a company called JPay. Families and friends on the “outside” can add money to this account. Incarcerated individuals then use these funds to buy items from the commissary.

Incarcerated individuals can order from the store once a week, spending up to $80. They order food, hygiene items (deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste), pens, paper, shoes, really most everything they need to do more than just survive. The prison gets a cut from whatever is sold in the commissary.

The commissary is a broken, corrupt system. One anonymous writer incarcerated in Georgia details it here: https://filtermag.org/georgia-prisons-commissary-prices-food/. Commissary prices are constantly on the rise and the families sending money to their loved one on the inside have to foot the bill.

Let me explain in more detail how this system works.

Incarcerated men and women work manual labor jobs at their prison – cleaning, cutting grass, welding metal. They work up an appetite, but prison meals are often insufficient, with high sodium (303% of recommended daily intake) and low nutritional value. The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) has been reported to spend between $1.77 and $2.20 per inmate per day on food.

So, prisoners need to use the commissary to meet their nutritional requirements. They order package after package of ramen so they don’t go hungry. They order shampoo and soap to make themselves presentable.  

The whole system could be fixed with a couple changes. The first change is simple - if the kitchen started serving nutritious, edible food, men and women wouldn’t have to rely on the commissary. One of the reasons we started teaching horticulture was to be the change we wanted to see. Our students get to keep whatever we grow in our prison gardens.

Families sending money on JPay have already lost one member to incarceration – they’re now down a paycheck, many already from households living on the margin. But they don’t want their loved one to find another way to eat - sex work, drugs, gambling, hired violence -  so they send them whatever money they can spare.

Just how bad is the food? Just how reliant are inmates on the store?

In 2024, 30.8 million commissary items were sold in Georgia prisons to an estimated 50,000- inmates. Seven million packets of ramen were sold. That’s 140 packets of ramen per incarcerated person.

So yes, I knew it was a big deal that their store had been taken away. The prison’s staff treats store as a privilege, and as we all know, privileges can be revoked. Someone had acted up and this was the collective punishment. The boys were hungry and upset. Without the store, they’d go hungry. The food is that bad.

Once everyone had made it into the classroom, I addressed the boys. “What was yesterday?”

“Monday.”

“Yes, but what else.”

“MLK Day,” said one boy.

“Let’s learn about MLK.” I read an excerpt from an article I’d discovered. The full piece is worth the read, but the excerpt I highlighted was this:

Economists William Collins and Robert Margo studied the economic consequences of violent unrest more directly by comparing cities and neighborhoods that experienced major riots in the late 1960s with otherwise similar places that didn’t. Their estimates show that riot-affected neighborhoods suffered 10% to 20% declines in property values that persisted for decades. Black male employment fell sharply and remained depressed for at least 10 years, and cities that experienced severe unrest lost population, capital and political leverage. Violence didn’t accelerate reform. It damaged it.

I asked, “Why did I read this to you?”

Puzzled looks.

Marquise began to nod his head. He was the one who had first informed me of the store situation.

“It’s because if you treat us like dogs, if you talk to us like dogs, we’ll be dogs. And they,” he said as he waved his arms around the prison, “think we’re dogs. They take our food away.”

“And?” I beckoned for him to continue.

“They want us to act like dogs. So they can take our store away. But that won’t work.”

One of the students looked at Marquise, “Why won’t that work?” he asked.

“Nonviolence. Like MLK.”

The other boys nodded along. They got it.

Prison is a dark place. I hate prisons. When the doors slam shut behind you and you walk the haunted halls, you feel the darkness. You feel the hatred. It’s scary and unnatural and I wish we had no need for them.

But we do and they’ll always be here. And there’s only one thing we can do to fix them.

Let go and let God. God is the only fix to our system.

Martin Luther King, Jr. writes,

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate… Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Please join us in praying for our prison system, including those in charge and those inside.

Have a blessed day.

Spencer