The economy

There is a functioning service economy inside every federal facility. It is not hidden. Knowing the going rates is what keeps you from being overcharged, indebted, or embarrassed in your first month.

Why this is here

Most of it is tolerated until something else goes wrong, and staff are aware of it. It is in this guide because knowing the going rates is what keeps you from being overcharged, indebted, or embarrassed in your first month. This is a description of a market you are about to live in, not a manual for operating in it.

Currency

There is no cash. Three things do the work instead:

• Stamps. Books of postage are the standard unit of account for small transactions. A book trades below its face value, and the discount varies by institution.
• Commissary goods. Shelf-stable food and hygiene items function as currency, particularly for people who are out of stamps.
• Outside transfers. Anything large is settled between people's outside contacts. This is how significant balances actually move.

Stores

Someone in every unit runs a store. It is exactly what it sounds like: an inventory of commissary items, sold on credit to people who have run out between commissary days.

The standard rate is two-for-one. You take one item now and return two on your next commissary. Some stores run three-for-two on larger items.

Store operators keep ledgers and treat it as a business, because it is one. Stores exist because commissary access is limited and weekly, and because people misjudge how much coffee they need.

Services

Nearly everything you would pay someone to do on the outside, you can pay someone to do here.

• Haircuts. Every unit has a barber, some of them genuinely skilled. Cheap, and one of the more universally used services.
• Laundry. Wash, dry, fold, and return on a schedule. Priced monthly.
• Tailoring and pressing. Hemming, altering, and ironing creases into your greens. This matters more than an outsider would guess — appearance is one of the few things people control.
• Cleaning. Someone will clean your area on a regular schedule.
• Cooking. People who can cook build elaborate meals out of commissary ingredients, and they are often very good. You supply the ingredients and pay a fee, or you pay for the whole thing.
• Food from the kitchen. Kitchen work comes with access. Eggs, meat, produce, and seasoning leave the kitchen and get sold on the unit. This is a substantial informal industry and one of the reasons kitchen jobs are sought after.
• Extra trays. Buying someone's tray at a meal, from people who would rather have the stamps than the food.
• Legal work. Jailhouse lawyers write motions, administrative remedies, sentence computation challenges, and post-conviction filings. Prices run from trivial for a form to genuinely expensive for a full motion. Quality varies enormously — a few are excellent, most are not, and the confident ones are not reliably the good ones. Anything you file goes out under your name and is your problem. The same warnings apply inside as out: paying non-lawyers for legal work.
• Phone minutes. Monthly phone time is capped, and people who do not use theirs sell the remainder. This is one of the more common transactions in the building, particularly toward the end of the month.
• Cell phone use. Contraband phones exist and time on them is rented. It is one of the most expensive things available, priced according to risk rather than effort.
• Tobacco. Federal facilities are smoke-free for inmates, which makes tobacco contraband, which makes it expensive. Prices vary more between institutions than any other item on this list — by a wide margin, and unpredictably.

How prices work

Price tracks scarcity and risk, not labor. A haircut is cheap because the barber is not risking anything and there are several of them. Anything contraband is expensive because someone is carrying real exposure, and the price is mostly that exposure being sold to you.

Prices also vary substantially between institutions, and the same item can cost several times more at one facility than another. Do not arrive with a fixed number in your head.

Local rates — what a book of stamps trades for, what the store marks up — are tracked per facility in the facility guide.

What it costs if it goes wrong

Running a store, gambling, and bartering are all prohibited acts under the disciplinary code, notwithstanding that they are ubiquitous. Possession of contraband is treated considerably more seriously, and possession of a phone most seriously of all — the standard outcome is a stretch in the special housing unit, a substantial loss of good conduct time, and a transfer to a higher security facility.

Enforcement is episodic rather than constant. It tends to arrive after something else has already gone wrong, which is a poor thing to rely on and a very common thing to rely on.

You will make your own decisions about all of this. Make them knowing the price, which is the only thing this section is for.

Hand the rest of this site to your family

You will not be able to look things up once you're inside. They can, and this is where: everything written for the one waiting — a twelve-part guide to mail, visiting, money, and your release date, plus their own FAQ and checklist. Alongside it, a guide to every facility with email alerts when visiting stops, the support group directory, calculators for your release math, and free answers when they have questions.

Send them the link before you report, not after they can't reach you.

If this helped, it will help someone else too.