Section:GDN 1J PaGe:10 Edition Date:190830 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 29/8/2019 17:58 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Fr iday 30 Aug ust 2019
10
W
hen Wilbert Rideau was 19,
in 1961, he killed a man in
a bungled bank robbery.
After being convicted and
sentenced to death, he was
sent to Louisiana State
Penitentiary, known by
prisoners, guards and locals
as Angola after a slave plantation that previously existed
on the site. Rideau was given the label C-18. The C stood
for “condemned”, and the number denoted his place on
the death-row list. His fate was to be the electric chair.
Rideau lived in isolation on death row for more than
a decade, and read voraciously. He became interested
in journalism and started to write. By the mid-1970s
he was living in the main prison and editing the
penitentiary’s in-house monthly magazine, the
Angolite. In the end Rideau avoided execution,
and today he is undoubtedly Angola’s most famous
former prisoner. Under Rideau’s 20-year editorship,
the magazine won many national awards , but he fi rst
made his name as a prison reporter with a column he
called The Jungle. The very fi rst topic he chose was
the working of the prison economy.
Today there are almost 2.3 million prisoners in the
US – by far the highest number of any country in the
world. Louisiana today has the second-highest
incarceration rate in the US (after Oklahoma overtook it
in 2018), with a male incarceration rate that far exceeds
the national average , and Angola is the state’s only
maximum-security jail. It is also the country’s largest,
covering an 18,000-acre site that is larger than
Manhattan. On a mission to investigate the world’s most
extreme economies, I set out for Angola. My hunch was
that I would fi nd examples of simplistic barter; what I
discovered was an innovative, complex and modern
system of hidden trade that off ers an important lesson
about the way economies work.
Serving prisoners and ex-convicts say the fi rst law
of prison economics is unsatisfi ed demand and the
innovation that it stimulates. Cut off from the outside,
prisoners fi nd themselves lacking staples and unable
to make choices that they had previously taken for
granted. The urge to get hold of simple material goods
is strong, and prisoners I met described the fi rst few
weeks inside as a shock during which time they learn
the rules of their new world and adapt to the reality
that they have lost not only their freedom but also their
possessions. Today in Louisiana new inmates receive
basic supplies: standard-issue clothing, a bar of soap
and some lotion. But there are lots of day-to-day items
they lack and want: deodorant, decent jeans, better
sneakers. It was the same in the 1960s, Rideau told
me when we met in Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital:
while you got simple provisions, a lot of eff ort went
into getting hold of extra comforts.
Some goods are available via offi cial channels, but
getting hold of them takes a long time. When a prisoner
in Angola orders a book or is sent one, it can take six
months, or longer, to reach them, since censors need
to check the content. The delay is an example of
a general theme in the Louisiana prison economy:
it operates in a time warp.
Time works diff erently in Louisiana prisons in part
because the state’s sentences have, historically, been
so long. Reforms since 2017 have begun to make some
senten cing guidelines more lenient, but for decades
everyone convicted of murder in the state got a
mandatory life sentence, as did any accomplices or
friends who were at the scene. Even non violent
crimes have often led to huge sentences in Louisiana.
Mandatory sentences for repeat off enders often
doubl ed with each conviction. There was also, until
recently, another rule that mean t a fourth off ence could
have a mandatory minimum of 20 years and a maximum
of life in jail. I met one ex-Angola resident, Louis, who
spent 20 years in Angola on a drug charge. He explained
his case isn’t the worst: Timothy Jackson, a man caught
stealing a jacket from a shop more than 20 years ago, is
set to spend the rest of his life in Angola. The average
sentence in Angola is almost 90 years.
In many prisons, simple goods that are cheap and
insignifi cant on the outside can have huge value inside;in facilities like Angola, the ultra-long sentences take this
to another level. In his memoir, In the Place of Justice ,
Rideau explains how tiny improvements can transform a
prisoner’s life. Like the other men on death row, he was
confi ned to a small cell. Three of the walls – the back and
two sides – were brick. The front wall was a grid of bars,
off ering no privacy as guards and other prisoners walked
past, and letting in a cold draught during winter. Getting
hold of a blanket or a curtain to hang over the bars could
have a transformative eff ect on an inmate’s life. When
your world shrinks to a three-sided box, a piece of cloth
that will grant you privacy and warmth becomes a
fundamental need you will work hard to satisfy.One way for an inmate to improve his lot in Angola
is through offi cial work. Another nickname for the
penitentiary is “the Farm” – it is surrounded by fi elds
planted with crops including corn, wheat, sorghum,
soybeans and cotton. Inmates toil all year, including
in August, when temperatures can rise to around 38 C.
Fruit and vegetables are grown and supplied across the
state prison system. It also raises revenue: Louisiana’s
Prison Enterprises, which sells goods produced by
inmates, brought in almost $29m in 2016, much of it
from Angola.
The prisoners’ offi cial work schedule is designed to
take up most of their day. Inmates cannot refuse to
work, and the vast majority have a job of some kind
(exceptions include men on death row or in solitary
confi nement). There is a clear hierarchy of jobs, and
those in the fi elds are at the bottom. One current prisoner
explained to me why being sent out “picking greens”
is the worst gig in the prison: the shift lasts eight hours
and it is hot, hard work. The men work in parallel lines,
tossing waste plant matter to their side. Accidentally
hitting another prisoner with a discarded stalk can
cause a fi ght; cutting your own hand while picking can
be taken as an attempt at self-harm, leading to a tedious
investigation. Those who serve a full decade without
breaking any rules – fi ghting or self-harm can both set
the clock back to zero – are awarded “trusty” status.
These prisoners get prized jobs such as working as
a caddy at the guards’ golf club, or as a cleaner at
the small museum devoted to the history of the
penitentiary located just outside the main gates.
The offi cial payroll at Angola works on a diff erent
scale from the outside world. For years, inmates say,
pay in the penitentiary ranged from 2¢ to 20¢ per hour.
While recent reforms lift this, most of those I spoke to
said picking greens or other basic farm work would earn
just 4¢ per hour, giving them a weekly wage of $1.60. At
this pay rate a convict must work for 181 hours to earn
$7.25, the federal minimum hourly wage in the US.
Those on the highe r rates of pay can be quickly demoted.
One lifer explained how his trusted status was revoked
and his pay put to the bottom of the scale when he
was accused of taking a wrench from the workshop,
something he said he did not do. Whatever the truth,
with good behaviour he can expect an annual raise of
4¢ – it could take him several years to get back to the
higher scale. Work in Angola is hard, mandatory and
not lucrative.
Once cash has been earned, a prisoner can spend it
at the commissary, of which there are seven in Angola.
These offi cial shops are a lifeline for prisoners seeking
material comforts. In Angola they carry Russell Athletic
sweatshirts, Fruit of the Loom T-shirts and a range of
footwear. The other big category is food. The inmates are
served three meals a day but say they are tasteless; by
contrast, the commissary off ers snacks such as sweet
and hot Asian sauce, Texas Tito’s jumbo whole dill
pickles and jalapeño-fl avoured cheese curls. The
quantities Angola orders reveal the scale of the
operation: a recent document sets out a tender for 3,000
boxes – 312,000 packets – of Cool Ranch -fl avour Doritos.
Prisoners know they are a captive market. The biggest
complaints are about the prices: prisoners are convinced
they are being ripped off , paying more than they would
in the outside world, and that their cost of living is rising
faster than their wages. They have a case. Until recently,
pay scales in Angola have been held at the level seen in
the 1970s. A packet of rolling tobacco back then retailed
at less than 50¢, so an inmate on 20¢ could earn a packetin half a day. Today it costs around $8 – they would need
to work a full week to buy a pack.
Louisiana is not alone in requiring its prisoners to work
on pay scales that bear no relation to the cost of goods
they might want to buy. Legally speaking, prisoners
do not need to be paid at all (the US constitution’s
13th amendment prohibits all forms of slavery and
involuntary servitude, “except as punishment for
crime”). Prisoners in Georgia make furniture and road
signs, and receive no payment. In Missouri, convicts are
paid $7.50 a month for full-time work – an hourly rate of
around 4¢. The UK’s system is less extreme, but similar.
Pay rates average around £10 for a 35-hour week, and
the same price complaints arise: favourite canteen
purchases – a bag of salted nuts, noodles, breakfast
cereal – often sell for over £2. Earning one of these
items on prison pay can be almost a full day’s work.In many ways, a prison’s offi cial economy is like that of
a regular town. In Angola there is a world of work, with
jobs and pay, promotions and demotions. And there is a
world of shopping, with consumer goods and stores. But
prisons are economic systems in which the cost of goods
bears no relation to wages or the buying power of the
workforce. The most important connections of a market
economy – the prices that link work and pay, demand
and supply – have been severed, intentionally, by the
authorities. The offi cial prison economy exists, but it
may as well not, leaving the prisoners to build their
own underground markets.
In the underground prison economy, things that
might seem simple are hard, and things that might seem
impossible can be pretty easy. The case of John Goodlow
and his pecans illustrates why. For 20 years Goodlow
was the pecan king of Angola, Wilbert Rideau told me.
Pecan nuts are grown across the US south, and home-
made pecan pralines are a favourite treat in Louisiana.
Goodlow made his own – the best ever, said Rideau,
“better than outside” – and sold squares of it for $2. He
probably could have raised his prices, said Rideau: they
were so sought after that Goodlow had often pre-sold a
whole batch before he had even fi nished cooking it.
The fact that making pralines was possible in a
maximum-security prison is surprising. Cooking them
requires lots of ingredients, as well as pots, a hotplate
and an oven. “Prisoners are never powerless,” Rideau
said. “They always have the power of rebellion, violence,
and just screwing up operations and making life hard for
the management.” The power prisoners have means that
management often cooperate, and facilitate certain
requests, he explained. In prisons, on low-level matters,
power is shared, and there is room for simple trade off s.
So getting hold of a pan can be fairly easy.
But some things that are mundane outside are
outlawed in jail. Anything that raises the probability of
escape or violence is banned: weapons, drugs, cigarette
lighters, mobile phones. But a host of innocent-seeming
items are contraband, too: savoury spreads like Marmite
contain yeast and can be used in illicit brewing; chewing
gum can be used to make an imprint of a key or lock;
baby oil can make an inmate’s arms slippery, rendering
them impossible to restrain.
Physical money itself counts as contraband. Instead,
prisoners’ wages are loaded on to cash cards that can
be used at the commissary. This keeps hard cash out
of prisoners’ hands and is a way to deprive powerful
inmates of resources that could help them bribe
guards. The logic means cash is treated as top-level
contraband, and any prisoner with “trusty” status
caught handling it loses their privileges.
The lack of cash is a problem for prisoners operating
one of the businesses to which guards tend to turn a
blind eye: baking pecans, selling fried chicken, grooming
services ranging from haircuts to tattoos to shirt-
pressing. These entrepreneurs can off er the goods or
service, but cannot accept cash as payment. One Angola
inmate told me that a prisoner with a spotless record for
good behaviour would be unlikely to take a $5 bill as
payment, even if the item being sold is worth $2. Money
is too risky – making US prisons one of the few places on
earth where the dollar is not accepted. Instead, prisoners
are pushed towards a barter economy, in which goods are
swapped rather than bought and sold with money.The fi rst law of prison
economics is unsatisfi ed
demand. The urge to get
hold of simple material
goods is strong
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