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Ramen Politics: Informal Money and Logics of Resistance in the Contemporary

American Prison
Article in Qualitative Sociology · June 2018

DOI: 10.1007/s11133-018-9376-0
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Michael Gibson-Light
University of Denver
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“Ramen Politics:
Informal Money and Logics of Resistance in the Contemporary American Prison”
Abstract: This article explores an unexpected yet pervasive arena in which changes to security
may alter lived experiences of and responses to punishment. Namely, amidst changes in the
quality of care behind U.S. prison walls and resultant prisoner insecurities in the face of
neoliberal penology, the nation’s prisoners have adapted informal prison markets to address
unmet needs and pursue autonomy. Where cigarettes once reigned as the de facto token of
exchange in the underground economy, the contemporary American prison is now home to a
new form of informal money: cheap, reliable food items like ramen noodles. Drawing on 18
months of ethnographic fieldwork within a U.S. men’s state prison and 82 in-depth interviews
with prisoners and institutional staff, this paper explores this change in the form of informal
prison money and what it reveals about the nation’s prisons and prisoners. It contends that prison
money reflects changing logics of prisoner resistance in particular political-economic and penal
contexts. As prison administrative practices, institutional conditions, and legal environments
change with time, prisoners adapt expressions of autonomy accordingly. While cigarettes
symbolized withdrawal from the rigors of prison life and individualized treatment—the dominant
logic of resistance of the prior era—the new ramen currency reflects a growing emphasis on
prison “foodways” in opposition to cost-shifting and deteriorating services behind bars.

Accounts of prison life throughout the 20th and into the 21st Century overwhelmingly report that
U.S. prisoners rely on cigarettes as the de facto informal money behind bars in the absence of
access to formal currency (e.g., U.S. dollars) and markets (Irwin 2005; Richmond et al. 2009;
Yardley and Wilson 2013). Tobacco products have thrived as prison money in part because they
are durable, portable, highly valued, and divisible into standardized units such as cartons, packs,
and individual cigarettes (Karpova 2013; Kauffman 2009). Even in institutions prohibiting the
sale or consumption of tobacco, cigarette money has filled this role, being easily concealed and
remaining readily available through smuggling networks (Lankenau 2001). In addition to these
practical characteristics, cigarettes are valued because smoking offers temporary reprieve from
the rigors of prison life (Goffman 1961; Morris and Morris 1963).
Yet, during ethnographic fieldwork in Sunbelt State Penitentiaryi (SSP)—a men’s state
prison in the U.S. Sunbelt region—I encountered an unexpected finding: Despite the ubiquity of
cigarette money in academic as well as popular accounts of prison life, incarcerated participants
at SSP no longer relied on tobacco products in this fashion. Instead, ramen noodles, a popular
item of sustenance in the institution, had emerged as the de facto form of informal money.
Journalistic accounts confirmed the adoption of ramen money in prisons nationwide (Collins and
Alvarez 2015; NPR Staff 2015) as well as other consumables such as honey buns (Harwell 2010)
or canned fish (Scheck 2008; Yglesias 2008) in some prison economies. Food products, it
appeared, had dethroned “king tobacco” (Reed 2007) as the predominant prison monetary tokens
in institutions across the country.
This presented a series of puzzles. First, after generations of the dominance of cigarettes
as prison money, what explains the emergence of items of sustenance as central units of
exchange? That the transition from cigarettes to food monies was not isolated or arbitrary but
1
coordinated across penal institutions nationwide suggests that prison currency operates as more
than a mere substitute for dollars. What can this development tell us about the role of money in
such contexts? What does monetary form express about the concerns, roles, and understandings
of prisoners and the changing penal landscape more broadly?
To address these emergent questions, I adopted an abductive ethnographic approach,
seeking to “move back and forth between data and theory iteratively” (Timmermans and Tavory
2012, 168) by turning to the literature to direct ongoing fieldwork. I draw on data from 18
months of participant observation to provide an inside look into prisoner responses to
contemporary prison insecurities and prison monetary practices. In addition, 82 in-depth
interviews with prisoners and staff illuminate economic narratives, understandings, and accounts
of participation in the underground ramen market and its emergence. Responses to dissatisfaction
were salient as prisoners in this large prison reported struggling to meet minimum standards of
nutrition and care, the costs of which are increasingly passed on to them. The relative scarcity of
ethnographic research in U.S. prisons in recent years has made it heretofore difficult to assess
these sorts of phenomena (Wacquant 2002).
Participants’ access to and consumption of cigarettes remained relatively stable,
eliminating tobacco prohibition as an explanation for the shift to ramen currency. Instead, other
recent changes in U.S. prisons better explain the shift to ramen money and its significance
behind bars. Amidst evolving administrative practices, institutional conditions, and legal
environments, prisoners adapt their tactics or expressions of resistance (Ross 2009). Changing
monetary forms reflect social insecurities and corresponding logics of prisoner resistance arising
in particular penal contexts. Under the “old penology” of the 20th Century, penal policy and
administration regarded offenders as individual wards of the state, emphasizing diagnosis and
2
treatment (Feeley and Simon 1992). A prominent logic of prisoner resistance at this time
prioritized the adoption of a withdrawn demeanor as an assertion of autonomy in the face of
treatment and responsibility. The cigarette, the de facto informal monetary token throughout this
period, reflected this logic, itself eliciting withdrawal from the realities of prison life and
mortification (Goffman 1961), signaling prisoner “cool” despite all else (Richmond et al. 2009).
With the development of a new, neoliberal penology, however, prisoners have come to be treated
as aggregate groups (Feeley and Simon 1992) and consumers of services (Aviram 2015). In this
new penal environment, solidifying under state budget crises of the Great Recession (Aviram
2016b), forms of prisoner resistance have shifted to emphasize prison foodways: assertions of
autonomy involving reclaiming control over food consumption practices (Smoyer 2016b). The
growing significance of food (or “chow”) in prisoner struggles is reflected in the rise of cheap,
tasty consumables like ramen as the new prison currency.
This paper does not intend to establish a causal model for the emergence of new prison
monies. Instead, it seeks to unpack the ways in which monetary form may map on to, reveal, and
highlight insecurities faced by prisoners in particular penal contexts and the logics of resistance
they express. Through this, it contributes to understandings of prisoner values and agency in
today’s carceral institutions as well as how changes in penal operations may alter prison life and
interactions.
I begin with a review of current literature on prison monies and theorize the role of
informal prison currency in regard to recent changes in the penal landscape. I then detail my
fieldsite and methodological approach before providing an empirical account of the underground
prison ramen market and related practices. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of
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this study for understanding prisoner practices, roles, and resistance in the contemporary U.S.
prison.
Prison money
“Informal money” refers to monetary tokens used in place of formal currencies. Informal monies
(also referred to as informal currencies) operate outside of standard systems of exchange (Zelizer
2001) and may develop alongside or in place of formal currency (Carruthers 2005), as when
access to the latter is disrupted (Collins 2004). They are typically relegated to informal markets
(Portes and Haller 2005) or other “circuits of commerce”—i.e., bounded economic spheres with
shared understandings of value and money (Zelizer 2010)—such as the prison.
In the absence of cash, prisoners develop their own forms of informal prison money
(Lankenau 2001). A prison monetary token is typically “a durable, portable, and highly
demanded commodity that can be comparatively easily obtained” (Karpova 2013, 15) and which
is reducible to a common scale (Gray 2001; Reed 2007). Though often relegated to limited
markets (Zelizer 2010), these goods are nevertheless treated as currency—as “the prison
equivalent of cash providing exchange for goods (such as food and drugs) and to pay debts”
(Richmond et al. 2009, 178) or to compensate fellow prisoners for services like personal laundry
or cleaning (Lankenau 2001). An item that seems commonplace in the “free world” may thus
take on a new life within prison as “a high value good…because it is a ticket to the black market.
Each of these goods can be sold, traded and gambled because each item is inherently money”
(Karpova 2013, 4).
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Cigarettes as prison money
Cigarettes and other tobacco products have conventionally operated as the de facto informal
prison money (Gray 2001; Radford 1945; Richmond et al. 2009; Yardley and Wilson 2013).
Prison “handbooks” even highlight the prevalence of tobacco as money (Owens 2012; Yardley
and Wilson 2013). Tobacco possesses a variety of properties that have facilitated this: while
valuable in its own right (for smokers, at least [Edgar and O’Donnell 2003; Taylor et al. 2012]),
it is also “durable, easily portable, [and] divides into natural units (cigarettes, packs, cartons)”
(Kauffman 2009, 42). In addition, the value of cigarettes as monetary tokens was historically
aided by the fact that they are costlier than most other goods and are easily concealed in prisons
where they are labelled contraband (Lankenau 2001).
Beyond these practical characteristics, cigarettes are valued for their role in prisoner
“removal activities” (Goffman 1961), facilitating temporary withdrawal from the realities of
institutional life, the ability to feel “cool” (Richmond et al. 2009), and an expression of
independence (Heffernan 1972; van den Berg et al. 2013). The passage of time is a focal concern
for prisoners facing regimentation and strict control (Guilbaud 2010). Taking a “smoke break”
allows some semblance of control over daily schedules (Guilbaud 2010; Heffernan 1972) and
may relieve tension, boredom, or stress (Richmond et al. 2009) to “reduce, minimally, the
rigours of imprisonment” (Morris and Morris 1963, 140). Finally, cigarettes in prison, as
elsewhere, may operate as social lubricants, engendering communal behavior and interaction
(Collins 2004; Goffman 1961) in an environment in which many may suffer isolation in the face
of coercive control (Colvin 1992). As will be discussed below, these features map onto particular
5
insecurities and stressors facing prisoner populations and a logic of resistance centering on
withdrawal.
Prison money under changing logics of prisoner resistance
As cultural, structural, and economic constraints shift, economic practices may evolve (Cohen
2004; Zelizer 2001). Often, this occurs alongside or following broader political changes
(Carruthers and Babb 1996; Ingham 1996; Lietaer and Dunne 2013). Within the prison, this may
be observed when expressions of prisoner autonomy—including but not limited to black market
activity—take different shapes to respond to the state or institution employing new prison policy
or imposing new roles upon prisoner populations (Ross 2009). The form of informal money
behind bars maps on to changing logics of resistance amidst the insecurities and stressors of
particular penal contexts (Table 1). The transition to a new dominant form of prison money
signals a change in the penal landscape and the perceptions and priorities of offenders.
Table 1. Monetary Form and Logics of Resistance Behind Bars

Logic of
Monetary Form Penal Context Prisoner Role
Resistance
Withdrawal,
Cigarettes Old Penology Ward of the State
Removal
New/Neoliberal Consumer of Sustenance,
Ramen
Penology Services Consumption
Past prisons under “old penological” regimes emphasized the diagnosis and treatment of
individual offenders (Feeley and Simon 1992). Criminal law focused on moral responsibility and
the assignment of guilt, approaching incarceration as a route to rehabilitation (ibid). Accordingly,
6
a dominant logic of prisoner resistance privileged the adoption of a “withdrawn” demeanor
through participation in “removal activities,” or “undertakings that provide something for the
individual to lose himself in, temporarily blotting out all sense of the environment which, and in
which, he must abide” (Goffman 1961, 271). Such activities—a form of “secondary adjustment”
to total institutions—“provide the inmate with important evidence that he is still his own man,
with some control of his environment” (ibid, 56). The de facto informal currency of the time,
cigarettes, reflected this, its value tied in part to its ability to both “anesthetize the pains of
imprisonment” (Morris and Morris 1963, 280) and make “them [prisoners] look ‘cool,’
‘sophisticated,’ or ‘outdoorsy’” (Richmond et al. 2009). Though rising to prominence under old
penological regimes, the cigarette served as the dominant form of informal prison money until
only recently.
Unlike the prior era in penology, in which the state prioritized the judgement and
treatment of prisoners on an individual basis, the current moment in U.S. carceral history may be
characterized by several interwoven penological, political, and economic trends that have led to
an emphasis on offenders as aggregate groups threatening security as well as budgets. The
continued swelling of prisoner populations under mass incarceration into the 2000s (e.g.,
Western 2006) corresponded with advances in the “new penological” technologies of the
containment and management of amassed prisoner groups (Feeley and Simon 1992; Wacquant
2001). An expanding neoliberal emphasis on personal and fiscal responsibility (Wacquant 2010)
further shaped the prison system through increased privatization (Aviram 2015) and thinning
penal budgets (leading, accordingly, to trimming back services) (Lynch 2010). Despite rising
prisoner populations (Glaze and Kaeble 2014; Wacquant 2010; Western et al. 2004), spending on
prison operations per prisoner (in state and private institutions alike) decreased (Kyckelhahn
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2012). The most recent alterations to the U.S. penal landscape came with the Great Recession of
the past decade, which precipitated increases in cost-shifting practices (e.g., Levenson and
Gordon 2007) and the reimagining of the prisoner, no longer as ward of the state, but as
consumer of public services expected to share in the fiscal burden of care (Aviram 2016b). The
new prisoners-as-consumers are responsible for fees covering electricity, medical care, room and
board, telephone use, and other amenities (Buchanan 2007; Gipson and Pierce 1996; Gottschalk
2010; Jackson 2007; Levingston 2007; Lynch 2010; Von Zielbauer 2007).
The culmination of these economic and political forces has produced a prison system that
is overcrowded, underfunded, and offering fewer and poorer quality services. Men and women in
today’s penal institutions face informal policies of “punitive frugality” (Lynch 2010)—
administrations scaling back the quality and number of prison services (Gottschalk 2006;
Gottschalk 2010), satisfying political agendas to remain “tough on crime” while maintaining
fiscal responsibility. Prisons have trimmed critical features like healthcare and psychiatric
treatment (Clark 1972; Clements 1985; Pogorzeleski et al. 2005), as well as “nonessential”
services such as educational and vocational training (Clements 1985; Gottschalk 2010; Schlanger
2006). A central and ubiquitous budget-cutting strategy has been “reducing the amount and
quality of food served to people in prison” (Gottschalk 2006, 244). Prisons nationwide purchase
second-hand provisions from the military or rely on damaged stock from wholesalers (Lynch
2010), slim calorie counts and serving sizes, or decrease the total number of meals (Correctional
News 2003; Gottschalk 2006; Smoyer and Lopes 2017). Food preparation is increasingly
subcontracted to private firms tasked with reducing chow line expenses (Grace 2003). This
decline in the quality and quantity of prison meals has fueled public discourses as well as
prisoner anxieties (Camplin 2017).
8
In this context, a new logic of resistance is observable in today’s prisons. As the
reinvented neoliberal state (Osborne 1993; Rondinelli and Cheema 2003) and prison (Wacquant
2010) continue to cut back on services and shift the cost of care to those in custody (Buchanan
2007; Levingston 2007; Lynch 2010), prisoners increasingly express power and autonomy
through food activities and consumption practices (Smoyer 2016b; Ugelvik 2011). Denied
nutritious or filling food (Gottschalk 2006) and expected to supplement the costs of food and
other services involuntarily consumed (Aviram 2015), they no longer prioritize the pursuit or
performance of withdrawal from the carceral setting. Rather, today’s prisoners emphasize the
politics of consumption amidst tensions with the authorities.
In addition to a means of survival, “the consumption of food,” says Godderis (2006) “is
an excellent means through which to express power in prison” (p.62; see also, Brisman 2008;
Smoyer and Lopes 2017). Prisoners occasionally wield such power through demonstrations like
chow line boycotts, sit-ins, or hunger strikes (Reiter 2014); however, such overt tactics have
grown relatively infrequent in the contemporary penal institution (Irwin 2005). Instead, today’s
prisons are home to differing degrees of strategic resistance, with a growing emphasis on covert
practices aimed at diluting or circumventing prison power structures. Subtler expressions of
power and autonomy—such as secreting, hoarding, or preparing food against institutional
regulations (Earle and Phillips 2012; Smoyer 2016a; Smoyer and Lopes 2017)—have grown
more frequent and effective (Crewe 2007; Ross 2009).
These food practices and meanings, or “foodways,” represent a key platform through
which prisoners may reclaim control over daily routines and resist deprivations (Smoyer 2016a).
The seemingly mundane effort to control what and when one eats actively defies penal structures
which otherwise repress prisoner identities and agency (Ugelvik 2011). “Choices of any kind
9
around food,” says Camplin (2017), “re-appropriate selfhood for inmates” (p. 57). Eating
ramen—in contrast to state-provided chow—provides an opportunity to “defin[e] one’s self” in
the face of strict limitations (Camplin 2017; Godderis 2006).
The ascendant logic of resistance in U.S. prisons is one which prioritizes consumption
and sustenance. Survival and autonomy within this system, in which prisoners feel “uncared for,
ignored, frustrated, and humiliated” (Smoyer and Lopes 2017, 244), supersedes withdrawal from
assessment and treatment. As in the prior period, the day’s de facto informal prison currency, the
ramen soup packet, derives worth in part from its role as an expressive good or “ritual supply”
(Goffman 1961) that maps on to changes in prisoner struggles and evolving insecurities.
Methods
Site
This article draws on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with prisoners and
prison staffers to explore prisoner economic practices and responses to insecurities and
dissatisfaction with care, which may only become apparent after extended observation. My site is
an anonymous, medium security, men’s state prison in the United States Sunbelt region, which I
refer to as Sunbelt State Penitentiary (SSP). A warehouse prison (Irwin 2005) housing thousands
of prisoners, SSP represents a model institution in which to observe prisoner monetary and
consumption practices. The prison itself is run by the state, though many services (including food
services) have been contracted out to private sector firms, as is increasingly common in U.S.
prisons (Aviram 2016a). Additionally, SSP has not banned tobacco products, unlike many
10
prisons (American 2016); yet, prisoners here have nevertheless transitioned away from cigarettes
as the primary form of informal money.
Collection and analysis
I conducted 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 82 in-depth interviews with prisoners and
staff in 2015 and 2016. Following approval from the state Department of Corrections, consent
was established during “town hall” style meetings in which I read from a consent script and
answered questions from prisoners and staff before seeking affirmative consent from each
participant. Upon encountering new prisoners or staff, I went through the same process one-on-
one when I sought to speak with them or record observations.
To facilitate daily access, I was granted a state ID badge and the status of “volunteer”
(typically reserved for tutors or chaplains). Prison volunteers occupy an accepted space between
CO and prisoner, allowing me to interchange my role onsite. I entered the field during daylight
hours to participate in prisoner work programs and observe the prison yard. Ethnographic prison
research entails unique practical and emotional challenges; as such, seasoned prison
ethnographers recommend no more than four days of fieldwork weekly (King and Liebling
2008), to which I adhered. On most days, I operated as “worker” alongside penal laborers at
different work sites. Occasionally, I shadowed staff, observing institutional operations within and
beyond prison walls. Experiencing each of these stages of programming, management, and
security revealed a fuller portrait of prison labor, which dominates the days of most prisoners
(Guilbaud 2010). In total institutions like prisons, day-to-day practices are heavily regimented
and outsiders are rare (Goffman 1961; Irwin 2005). Reflexivity in this context was vital to
11
observations and I remained sensitive to relations with participants, changes in procedure, and
my own academic and personal suppositions. The length of my data collection period helped
diminish any effects of procedural alterations that influenced prisoner and staff practices early
on. Additionally, I refrained from alerting prisoners or staff to my fieldwork schedule to impede
the potential for behavioral or operational accommodations to my presence.
To supplement observations, I conducted in-depth interviews with 69 prisoners and 13
staff members across the institution. Prisoner participants were drawn from four primary work
programs where I conducted participant observation (a sign production shop, an auto garage, a
food prep warehouse, and a call center). The nature of the prison and prisoners’ dominated
schedules often made it difficult to secure time and space to conduct interviews. Because of this,
they ranged from 15 minutes to 80 minutes. Influenced by the “racial politics” of the
institution—informal rules governing and limiting interactions between racial/ethnic cliques
(Goodman 2014)—white prisoners were quicker to consent to recorded interviews in the early
weeks of collection, increasing their final participation rates. The reluctance of other groups
eventually faded but resulted in fewer interviews overall. The final prisoner interview sample
included 20 Latino (12 Mexican-American, 8 foreign national), 34 white, 14 black, and 1 Native
American. No Asian prisoners were encountered during fieldwork. No significant differences
along racial/ethnic lines were apparent in regard to the topics of this article.
Interviews and fieldnotes emphasized daily prison life and labors, perceptions of work,
interactions with individuals and spaces, and preparations or plans for release. The natural
emergence of prison service issues and responses to them speaks to their saliency. I approached
these emergent themes abductively, drawing on past research to direct ongoing fieldwork
(Timmermans and Tavory 2012). That is, rather than anticipating such findings and imposing an
12
analytic framework from the start, or allowing my understandings to emerge purely from
empirical data, I instead returned to the literature to contextualize what emerged during
fieldwork. Questions regarding services and informal monies were broached informally in the
field and occasionally in interviews. I sought to triangulate findings through questioning
prisoners and staff as well as seeking confirmations or refutations through further observation.
Fieldwork was not underway before or during the time of the move from tobacco to
ramen currency, which was negotiated over the course of years predating my work in the
institution. As such, questions regarding specific details of how this change was first initiated are
beyond the scope of my research. Instead, I explore how the use of ramen as money maps on to
broader prisoner insecurities stemming from political-economic and penal trends. Further, I
illustrate economic practices at SSP, participant understandings of the transition to the ramen
economy, and implications for prisoner outlooks and roles behind bars.
Punitive frugality and prisoner perceptions of nutrition
At Sunbelt State Penitentiary, practices of “punitive frugality” (Lynch 2010) were readily
apparent. Amongst other instances of cost-shifting and service cutbacks, food service costs had
been reduced through purchasing ever-cheaper provisions, shrinking serving sizes, and limiting
the number of meals prisoners received per week. A major change occurred in the 2000s when a
new private firm took over food services. Before then, prisoners at SSP received three hot meals
daily, but, only a few years later, the second meal was reduced in size and changed to cold cut
sandwiches and a small bag of chips. Lunch was removed from weekend menus and portion
sizes in every meal were reportedly reduced.
13
Employees of the private firm confirmed these reductions. One day during fieldwork in
the food prep work program, I met a staff member who was temporarily visiting the site. His
primary responsibility, he told me, was cost reduction through the portioning of meals and
purchasing of ingredients. “The prison used to control their own food,” he said, shaking his head.
“They were spending two dollars a tray [per meal, per prisoner]. Now that we’re in charge, we
only charge the client one-point-two-four-nine-one dollars per tray—basically a dollar twenty-
five.”
SSP prisoners frequently discussed receiving food that they deemed either inedible or too
little to sustain them for a day. According to one prisoner on the housing yard, “The chow is
really bad. They give you little kid meals like that’s enough calories for a grown man.” Shaking
his head, he added, “It’s terrible, this food.” If you fail to secure additional food on your own,
one man said, “you’re gonna starve.” Such an environment of deprivation negatively impacts
prisoners’ sense of self, resulting in feeling ignored, reviled, or generally uncared for (Smoyer
and Lopes 2017). Participants reported feeling like children or, at the extreme, subhuman. As one
participant contended, “They treat us worse than the [K9 Unit] dogs. They feed the dogs better.”
The unappetizing nature of prison food is a traditional facet of prisoner punishment (e.g.,
Sykes 1958). Yet, prisoners regarded the quality food as having reached a new low. Recent
developments led to smaller, less nutritious meals than before. Some attributed changes in food
to changes in the prisoner population and the attitudes of younger prisoners:
Back in the 90s, the food was on point. Because if it wasn’t, we’d sit down [strike].
But now, these new cats are timid. They don’t want to risk their shit—their [good
behavior status] points. Then they’ll lose their phone privileges and they can only
get $40 in store [commissary purchases] each week.
14
Indeed, overt conflict at SSP had diminished in recent decades. This is common of contemporary
prisons in general, the architecture and management of which are aimed at reducing hostility and
maintaining tentative calm, facilitating subtler forms of resistance (Irwin 2005; Terry 2004). At
SSP, as elsewhere, this has coincided with the dwindling quality of care.
Prisoners often romanticized the “good old days” of prison chow. For instance, during
their smoke break one day, I listened as two veteran prisoners discussed recent meals at SSP. The
first, a middle-aged man who had been “in and out of prison a few times,” walked beside the
second, who had spent decades of his life in prisons across multiple states. Taking deep drags
from their cigarettes, the two lamented changes in the carceral system over the years, especially
as regarded the food. They alleged that minimum food portion requirements are today rarely met
and chow line workers are instructed to dish out smaller helpings:
“The only time the trays [portion sizes] are right are when the wardens visit,” the
first man says. “After they leave, it’s back to normal.”
Squinting into the smoke, the second man responds with a mellow drawl, “It wasn’t
like that 10 years ago, man.” […] “The chow line workers would get beat up back
then and straighten right up,” the first man said, slamming his straightened palm
down on the picnic bench. The second man nodded emphatically with a wide grin.
“Yup! That’s right.”
- Field notes excerpt
The irritation expressed by these men (couched in nostalgia) was common.
On a different occasion, a cook who had also been incarcerated several times seemed to
justify the decreased meal sizes: “There’s so many people in prison now that DOC [Department
of Corrections] can’t afford to feed all these people. They’re following the [minimum calorie]
15
guidelines and they’re right on the line of that.” Regardless of the explanation, prisoners and
staff members alike agreed that portions had noticeably decreased.
One vocal working prisoner, called DS, attributed the declining quality of food to the
transition in the management of food services:
Since [the new company took over], it’s the worst shit it’s ever been. It’s 1,000
times worse. They don’t even let the cooks test it, ‘cause it tastes that bad. They
won’t let us season it! […] If I give you a menu, you’d read that and say ‘Hey that
sounds good.’ You come to chow and see it, you’d throw up! Here—here’s last
night’s bar-be-que chicken.
He held up a plastic baggie filled with four or five thin, breaded sticks. Another man, Jimmy,
overheard and walked over, pointing at the food. “See, it’s not bar-be-que,” he said with a
furrowed brow. “They sure make it sound good, don’t they? It’s not even meat—it’s ‘processed
separated meat product.’”
“I save all my meals to eat at once so I can actually get full,” DS added, dumping his bar-
be-que chicken into a cup with some “hash” (mashed potatoes and bits of sausage) from
breakfast. “And I ain’t complaining. I got myself in here,” he continued. “But I be damned if I sit
here and let you and my people on the outside—the ones that’s not committing crimes—pay
[taxes] for all this shit and be told it’s good.”
In addition to small portions, SSP prisoners and staff reported declining quality of
ingredients. While official prison menusii described appetizing stews and casseroles, these foods
were often difficult to stomach in reality. “The food in here,” one man attested, shaking his head,
“it’s not what they say it is.” Seated across a table, another prisoner shot his head up. “Right,” he
chimed in, “like, they say we get broccoli, but we get nothing but old stems!” The first man
16
affirmed, “We never see the trees. But the menus are publicly available—so you can see broccoli
[on the menu]. You can see ‘turkey a la king’—I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t turkey.”
Another prisoner strolled over, stirring a coffee. “It’ll say ‘hamburgers,’” he said. “There’s no
hamburgers.” His seated friend added, “Or ‘biscuits and gravy’ for breakfast. I don’t know why
they say biscuits! We haven’t seen a biscuit for—shit—three months!” His coworker nodded
solemnly, and remarked, “Back in the day, prisons used to have dairy farms, cows, pigs. We’d
eat hamburger, sausage, bacon, fresh milk.” He trailed off, seeming to reminisce once more
about prison terms long passed. “On paper, to the outside, this menu looks pretty good,” another
man said, clutching the menu in his hand. “But in reality, these meals are nasty and not big
enough.” On many occasions, participants complained that “whoever is in charge” of approving
chow menus must think that the food is acceptable based on the deceptive menu.
The first time I joined my participants for a meal, I was met with shock: non-prisoners
rarely partook in the prison chow. Sitting down with a sack lunch, or “bag nasty,” I faced wide
eyes and amused smiles. “Ooh, this will take up a whole chapter of your book,” a man called
Alec blurted with a chuckle. His coworker, Maurice, leaned in as I unwrapped two slices of
bologna and wiped away a layer of gelatinous buildup. “Oh no,” he warned, “don’t smell it,” as a
musty aroma rose from the pale meat. On one man’s suggestion, I added the crushed contents of
a small bag of corn chips to my sandwich to mask the texture and taste of the bologna. This
lunch—sandwich fixings, chips, cookie, and a packet of flavored drink powder—was the same
every weekday, with slight variation in the type of meat or snack (sometimes cheese slices were
included, but not on this day). On weekends, the men received no lunch in place of an “enhanced
breakfast”; though, according to one participant, they “haven’t seen that [larger breakfast] for a
while.”
17
Figure 1. Contents of a "bag nasty" lunch from SSP (clockwise from top left: bread, meat,
chips, ranch, mustard, drink mix, cookie, cheese)
As I had been cautioned, the meal was insubstantial and unpleasant—the small packet of
mustard and chips were little help against the unsavory bologna. (Figure 1 features a similar “bag
nasty” with which I was permitted to exit SSP on a different occasion.) Later that day, I would
need to eat a more filling second lunch. My participants, too, supplemented their chow—some
with ramen, others with different food items purchased in the commissary or black market. Many
would forgo the “bag nasty” altogether (sometimes to sell the contents to others), opting to
partake only in food of their own choosing. Exercising this limited degree of choice over
personal consumption represented a subtle yet meaningful form of resistance to total
administrative prison control (Smoyer 2016a).
Some staff members were outspoken regarding the quality of prisoner food. When one
jokingly insisted that I eat a “bag nasty” as “initiation” on my first day of fieldwork, another
interjected: “No! He can’t eat that!” Others went a step further, guaranteeing that I would get
sick if I partook in prisoner meals. One claimed to have gotten food poisoning after eating from
the chow line. He reported that he later found out that the chicken he had eaten was labelled “not
18
for human consumption.” Another officer independently made a similar claim when recalling a
past stint overseeing kitchen staff:
[The officer] tells me that one of the prisoners called out to him while he was
observing the food prep. “Hey, CO, come over and look at what they feed us!” He
walked over and opened the box that they were in the process of unpacking.
“Oh! What!?” he exclaimed. He tells me that the box contained “nasty-looking full
chickens,” and was boldly marked several times with the words “not for human
consumption.”
My own attempts to locate such labelling failed. Instead, I found boxes of frozen meat marked:
“for institutional use only.” According to some prisoners in the food prep warehouse, these had
replaced the labels described by the officers.
The commissary store at SSP had also changed in recent years. Staff members reported
price increases, especially for popular items like ramen. Prisoner wages did not increase
alongside this inflation. One staffer recounted observing these changes over the course of his
decades-long career in the prison system, reporting that the Department of Corrections “used to
run the commissary. But [when a new] director came in…he switched the commissary over to [a
private company]. So, the prices went up.” Some prisoners postulated that the companies
controlling the food were working together, following state decentralization and privatization of
these services. “The state washes their hands of it—the commissary and kitchens are [privately]
contracted,” one said. “They work together. They [the kitchens] don’t feed us enough; they [the
commissary] charge more for soups. When the state used to feed us, it was a lot better.”
19
Ramen noodles, which prisoners commonly relied on to supplement small meals, cost
$0.59 per pack. “You can go down to [a grocery store] and they’re ten for a dollar,” one prisoner
shouted one day. “And that’s when you buy a pack of ten. Think of how many the prison is
buying in bulk! They’re buying millions. They must be even cheaper, but they cost even more
[for us].” He later asserted, “Last time I was in [prison], a pack of soup was 30 cents. When I
came back this time, it was up to 59 cents—but we don’t get paid no more that we used to!”
Frustration with stagnant wages is a common prisoner grievance the world over (e.g., Gibson-
Light 2017; Guilbaud 2012). At SSP, the last raise in standard prisoner pay occurred several
decades ago.
When desirable food becomes scarce, its value rises for prisoners. Correctional officers
often draw on this to express control over the prisoner population (Ugelvik 2011). Loss of
privileges (LOP) was a common punishment for certain violations. Prisoners receiving LOP
were unable to freely purchase items in the commissary. What’s more, according to participants,
men who risked leveling food complaints to officers were frequently threatened with disciplinary
tickets, which might lead to LOP, lower pay, termination from work programming, or even
relocation to higher security prison yards.
One day during fieldwork, I asked “Why don’t more people complain when the food is
not served properly [with correct portions]?” With a grunt, one man replied, “‘Cause it don’t do
shit. You just get more tickets.” His friend, Sammy, agreed, adding that improvements were only
ever short term. “For instance,” he said. “I watched a dude this morning complain: ‘Weigh this
[serving].’ They’re [the kitchen worker was] like ‘Oh, you’re right, it is the wrong scoop.’ Five
trays later, they switched back to the small scoop.” After this conversation, Emmett, who had
been listening quietly, marched away to place his as-yet untouched sandwich meat serving onto
20
an electronic scale. Instead of reading “3.0 oz.” as the menu described, the blinking blue
numbers revealed that the meat weighed 2.1 ounces. Gritting his teeth, he clenched the meat in a
fist and walked off. The others nodded.
The prison ramen economy
“Prisoners do not simply comply with the regimens imposed upon them. They actively conspire
to survive, to reduce their state of deprivation…and to pursue their own self-interests” (Irwin
2005, 9). In total institutional settings in which behaviors and identities are prescribed and
monitored, prisoners resist through refusal to adhere to basic procedures. Survival in the face of
deprivation is a facet of this resistance and reclaiming control over eating practices is its most
prominent form (Smoyer 2016b). Yet, beyond securing desirable, reliable food, prisoners at SSP
exhibited another response to institutional control: modifying entire economic markets to fulfill
unmet needs, “actively conspiring” to maintain autonomy in consumption practices. This section
will detail the function of ramen noodles as informal money within the institution as well as the
formal and informal labors on which prisoners relied to participate in the underground ramen
economy.
The structure of the prison ramen black market
During my first several months of fieldwork at SSP, however, I was surprised to hear references
to “soups” (i.e., ramen) used as payment in the informal economy instead of tobacco products.
Participants referenced purchases from other prisoners, paying for different goods (e.g.,
21
smuggled vegetables, toothpaste), services (e.g., bunk cleaning, laundry), or gambling using
ramen soups. News reports across the nation affirmed that other prisoner populations have
adopted food products as a primary unit of exchange as well (Collins and Alvarez 2015; Harwell
2010; NPR Staff 2015; Paynter 2011; Scheck 2008; Yglesias 2008), though empirical accounts
are limited. Soups were used as money throughout the institution. While most valued ramen as
money and as food, some participants avoided eating soups and relied on them purely for
exchange. As under the previous cigarette economy, however, failure to consume the good did
not preclude individuals from purchasing them from the commissary, accumulating reserves, and
participating in the informal market (Radford 1945).
On one visit to the prison housing unit, I observed as one prisoner approached another’s
bunk to collect on a debt. “You got what you owe me?” he asked casually. “On the counter
there,” replied the second man, gesturing towards two packets of ramen noodles. A nearby
correctional officer appeared not to register the exchange. Puzzled by this, I asked other
prisoners and staff members about informal economic practices at SSP. In many accounts across
several months, all prisoners reported using ramen to pay for goods or services from other
prisoners, with many stating that they acquire essential goods (e.g., other food, denture cream)
primarily via payment in ramen through the black market.
During work one day, I asked a working prisoner whether he ever uses cigarettes to pay
for things. “Naw,” he replied, matter-of-factly, “not no more.” Over the past decade or so, by his
estimate, cigarettes (as well as stamps and envelopes) had faded in popularity as a medium of
exchange, with ramen taking prominence. According to two others, some still occasionally
traded cigarettes for other goods, but these were commonly barter rather than monetary
exchanges (with tobacco acquired for immediate consumption rather than for use as money).
22
Correctional staff affirmed that monetary practices had changed over the years, with prisoner
money in SSP today taking the form of soups for everyday transactions. One staffer recalled that
when he first began his career, prisoners only traded cigarettes; now, several decades later, he
sees ramen used instead.
“One way or another, everything in prison is about money,” stated one soft spoken
prisoner. “Soup is money in here. It’s sad but true,” said another. As one man asserted, “you can
get a lot with soups.” Another went further to state that “a soup is everything” and many will
trade anything they own to get one. He explained:
It’s ‘cause people are hungry. You can tell how good a man’s doing [financially]
by how many soups he’s got in his locker. ‘20 soups? Oh, that guy’s doing good!’
[…] People will pay more for an envelope when they need to write home to get
more soups! Prison is like the streets—you use currency for everything. In here, it’s
soups.
Soups represent an ideal medium of exchange in the prison context. They are inherently
valuable as affordable, easily-prepared “hunger killers” (Errington et al. 2012), yet also exhibit
certain characteristics of money. A ramen packet, like a dollar bill, stores value over long periods
of time, can operate as a standardized unit of account, and can be readily exchanged between
parties (Asmundson and Oner 2012; Ingham 1996). In the face of declining services and the
growing perception of prisoners-as-consumers (Aviram 2015), the trade of ramen also reflects
changes in prisoner insecurities. In recent decades, ramen quickly supplanted cigarettes as the de
facto currency at SSP. Underground markets and social pricing mechanisms have changed
accordingly.
23
Table 2 depicts black market and commissary costs of several popular goods at SSP.
Commissary prices were acquired from official listingsiii. They are not static, yet did not change
over my time in the prison. Ramen prices were derived from prisoner accounts, triangulated
through inquiries with many participants across times and settings. There were no notable
discrepancies in reported prices.
Table 2. Prices in the SSP Prison Ramen Black Market
Prison Black Market Black Market

Good to be
Commissary Cost (packs of Cost in Dollars
Traded
Store Cost ($) ramen) (packs * $0.59)
Ramen instant
0.59 1 0.59
noodle pack
Fresh fruit or unavailable in
1 or 2 0.59 - 1.18
vegetable commissary
Envelope 0.02 1 0.59
Sweatshirt 10.81 2 1.18

Thermals (top
11.30 6 3.54
and bottom)
Pouch of coffee 5.47 4 2.36
Denture adhesive 2.57 1 0.59
Loose tobacco 3.13 or 4.29 6 3.54

Five "tailor-
2.00 (approx.) 1 0.59
made" cigarettes
Depending on the quality and type, a smuggled vegetable or fruit was valued at one or
two packets of ramen in the underground market. Onions and bell peppers were particularly
popular and were staples in prisoners’ “homemade” cuisine. In addition, one soup could be
traded for an envelope. Two bought a sweatshirt. Six bought a complete pair of thermal
undershirt and bottoms (a “pretty good deal,” according to one man). Approximately four soups
24
could be traded for a smuggled bag of coffee. One could be traded for denture adhesive. Six
bought a bag of loose tobacco for rolling cigarettes (the commissary offered two brands at
different prices, each fetching the same black-market price). And, even though “tailor-made”
(i.e., packaged) cigarettes cost far more than soups in the commissary store, a single soup could
be traded for five cigarettes. A pack of one popular cigarette brand cost approximately $8.00
($0.40 per cigarette) at the SSP commissary, meaning that a $0.59 soup could fetch $2.00 worth
of cigarettes, speaking to the increasing value of cheap food over tobacco products in the
informal economy.
The conversions depicted in Table 2 demonstrate that ramen does not merely operate as a
proxy for dollars—commissary prices are not directly mirrored in black market values. Instead,
the value of different goods has been negotiated over time, resulting in agreed upon prices today
in terms of ramen money. The discrepancies between columns one and three reveal that the
“true” cost for many black-market exchanges (commissary price for ramen required in a black-
market exchange) appears disconnected from commissary store prices (note the pricing of
envelopes or clothing, for example).
On some occasions, participants referred to the “true” cost of black market goods, but this
was uncommon. It typically occurred when discussing disputes over price markups, which
sometimes arose in exchanges across racial/ethnic lines. For instance, during a lunch break one
day, a Mexican-American man told his friends about a piece of fruit he attempted to buy from a
white prisoner on the yard:
He looks up and says, “One guy had a green apple yesterday. But he wanted three
soups for it!” The group appears shocked: “What? Shit,” the short guy exclaims.
25
“Is that a high price?” I ask. “That’s a buck eighty,” replies a third man. “That’s
three meals in here, man.”
“That’s a lot,” the original man utters. Shaking his head, “I really wanted it, but
damn, I can’t afford that.” His friend nods.
This reference to the rounded-up $1.80 commissary store cost for three packs of soups suggests
that these men remained aware of “true” costs of the ramen economy, even if they did not always
convert directly to black market values. Additionally, this conflict over pricing between members
of different racial/ethnic groups is indicative of the tense nature of prison food practices—“racial
politics” standardly prevent prisoners from sharing food across racial lines (Goodman 2014;
Valentine and Longstaff 1998). Prisoner peddlers are often willing to trade with buyers of other
groups, but often add additional “tax.”
Prisoners purchased goods from others in their housing unit or from “inmate stores”—
black market shops operated by enterprising individuals out of their prison bunks (Irwin 2005).
Unlike the prison commissary, which was only open one day per week, inmate stores remained
almost constantly accessible. Additionally, some goods—especially clothing—were regularly out
of stock in the commissary, but many hungry men would literally sell the clothes off their backs
for some soups. Maurice illustrated just this when he showed off a recent purchase one day at
work: “I bought my new thermals—top and bottom—[for] 6 soups.”
Debts were common amongst prisoners. Many owed back payments of ramen to the
operators of personal stores, which often operated on systems of credit (another benefit over the
commissary for prisoners low on funds). Those who repaid debts quickly were sometimes
26
granted higher credit limits. They could even refinance debts with goods acquired on credit from
different black-market stores. One participant outlined how it worked:
[When a prisoner] owes somebody store, he’ll go and get it from somebody else’s
store. Then he got good credit at that [first] store [because he paid the debt]. So
then he get more from that store. It’s a cycle—that bill keep going up and up!
Maintaining good credit and paying debts was important. Those who failed to do so risked
becoming targets of retaliation. “We men—our word is our bond,” I was told. “That’s the one
thing we gotta hold on to in here. But some people, they word ain’t bond. Come to find out, they
ain’t shit.” Another reported: “I’ve seen fights over ramen. Who the fuck gonna fight about
ramen noodles?? That’s 15 cents on the outs!” he exclaimed with frustration. As one man
attested, “people get killed over soup, y‘know ‘mean?”
Dramatic displays of aggression were part of life on the yard. For most, however,
participation in the ramen economy involved little direct risk of physical violence. In warehouse
prisons like SSP, “there is still considerable intergroup hostility, but overall, there is a general
détente among hostile groups” (Irwin 2005, 111). Accordingly, the ramen economy—like the
cigarette economy before it—operated smoothly day-to-day.
Getting ramen: the formal and informal labor markets at SSP
As illustrated above, ramen noodles at SSP were not cheap. Some prisoners received financial
assistance from family or friends on the outside who added money to their commissary accounts,
but few could claim such support. Instead, many relied on wages from formal prison work
programs to subsist. It was often repeated that these wages were necessary to get through a
27
prison sentence. Prison chow alone was not considered sufficient or healthy by most. “In order
for us to eat healthy, you have to have a job. Otherwise, it’s not good,” one man said. Another
outlined the potential severity of the issue: “If you don’t have [commissary money], you go
hungry.” For the lowest paid workers at SSP, a full day’s work yielded just enough to purchase
one pack of ramen from the commissary.
Survival in the face of deprivation was easier if one acquired a desirable job. Only two
work programs boasted wages above $0.50 per hour. As one worker put it, “These [higher
paying] jobs are the only ones where you can survive in here—you can afford food and hygiene
[products]. Otherwise you’re relying on the state.” Tensions were often higher at lower-paying
jobs. One older prisoner working in food prep protested: “Of course I’m not happy about the pay.
If anything, I barely get by—I’m not talking about wants. I’m talking about needs! I’m
completely on my own in here [with no familial support] and it’s not enough.”
Sometimes, frustrations over food and wages begat conflict. One day, I witnessed a brief
quarrel between two food prep workers and a civilian staff member. The staffer threatened to fire
one of the men, nicknamed Solar, for sitting down for too long. Solar’s coworker chimed in,
“You know we get paid less than slaves?” The staff member seemed taken aback. “That’s not
even true. They only worked for food,” he said. With eyebrows raised, the prisoner retorted,
“Well, we don’t even get food!” A grin appeared on Solar’s face and he produced a torn piece of
cardboard from a nearby trashcan and quickly scrawled something on it. He clutched his
creation, a cardboard panhandling sign, between outstretched fists. It read:
Please Help
Homeless & Broke
Will Work
28
For Food
The staff member read his sign and waved him off: “Yeah, yeah.” The men laughed and the
tension was dispelled, but frustrations over pay and meals remained unaddressed.
For some, formal work program pay was too low to acquire much ramen. To supplement
these wages, many engaged in shadow work, or “compensatory subsistence strategies that are
fashioned or pursued in the shadow of more conventional work…because participation in those
markets fails to provide a living wage” (Snow 1993, 146). In prison, this was referred to as
having a “hustle.” Even amongst those with steady work assignments, a common mantra at SSP
was “you gotta have a hustle to survive.” In other words, absent a steady flow of money from
family or friends on the outside, prisoners relied on illicit trade or services to afford food and
other goods.
Many stole foods to trade in the black market. Theft (or “boosting”) was common in the
kitchens and food prep programs and some justified it as a perk of these positions. One man said,
“I don’t look at it as stealing. I look at it as making the pay right.” Another attested, “I don’t
make enough to buy food from this job.” One man justified stealing food with a sarcastic wit:
“They pay us 20 cents an hour, don’t feed us enough at meals, and jack up the prices of
everything in commissary. Big surprise that people are stealing fresh vegetables.” To be sure,
selling vegetables was a profitable hustle. “Fresh veggies are like lobster in here,” said one man,
biting into what he called a “black market zucchini” on his lunch break.
Aside from food smuggling, prisoners sold various services. Some cleaned others’ bunks
for one soup per week. For one to two soups (depending on the amount of clothes and linens),
some washed others’ laundry. Others gambled for soup. In one work program, I observed
prisoners placing bets in a “workplace football pool.” Each bet a single soup on their picks over
29
several football games. The eventual winner was awarded the pot (around 15 soups). Some made
most of their living gambling. One participant reported that he played the card game pinochle for
the equivalent of $25 per week.
These and other hustles were common in SSP, where men regularly resorted to the black
market to acquire food. Counter to the vision of the Federal Bureau of Prisons—shared by most
state agencies—that prisons remain free from disturbances and violence (Federal Bureau 2015),
as well as policies prohibiting unauthorized prisoner sales and trading (U.S. Department 2011),
participants reported a growing reliance on illicit trading and labor, sometimes culminating in
debt or assaults. Stagnant wages contributed to this (Guilbaud 2012).
Debunking prohibition and abstention explanations for the eclipse of cigarette money
Although tobacco has fallen as common currency in prisons (Kennedy et al. 2014, 2), the rise of
other monies has not been explored in the empirical literature. I have argued that the emergence
of ramen currency reflects shifting tensions behind bars resulting from changing approaches to
penology. Here, I will address three alternative explanations or potentially confounding factors
and explain why each is in fact inadequate to address the phenomenon.
First, smoking remains a common practice at SSP. Indeed, only two incarcerated
participants claimed to be nonsmokers. The rest took any available opportunity to partake
(mostly hand-rolled cigarettes, or “rollies”). This is typical of prison systems writ large, in which
smoking rates remain higher than for the rest of the population (e.g., Sweeting and Hunt 2015).
The shift in informal money, then, cannot be adequately explained by tobacco usage rates.
30
Second, the move away from tobacco money cannot be explained by smoking bans. A
number of U.S. prisons have banned tobacco (Kennedy et al. 2014; Lankenau 2001; Thibodeau
et al. 2012); yet, a majority of Sunbelt prisons, including SSP, have not done so (American
2016). Though cigarettes remain available for purchase, SSP prisoners nevertheless now trade in
ramen in the informal market. What’s more, even in prisons which have banned tobacco
products, cigarettes are still acquired with relative ease and have historically persisted as
currency despite prohibitions (Kauffman et al. 2008; Lankenau 2001). In these institutions, “even
when cigarette sales are banned, tobacco will be available to those willing to pay the [black
market] price” (Kauffman 2009). Despite prohibitions, cigarettes have gained power behind
bars—sales have reportedly increased via black markets (Kauffman et al. 2008; Kauffman 2009;
Lankenau 2001). Though cigarette consumption appears unaffected, monetary practices have
evolved with other needs and desires.
Lastly, this change cannot be explained by inflating tobacco prices. Several “old number”
prisoners (i.e., those who have been in the prison system for a long time) and veteran staff
members reported that price changes in cigarettes did not align with the move to ramen as the
primary currency. In fact, ramen noodle prices have also increased in the prison commissary.
High costs have traditionally supported rather than hindered tobacco’s use as informal money
(Lankenau 2001). And, though cigarette costs are high, other goods which have operated as
subordinate forms of prison money (e.g., envelopes) do not possess prohibitive price tags, yet
these too have been surpassed by food as money. Of note, then, is the fact that other non-food
items did not oust cigarettes as the dominant monetary token. As suggested, the value of soups
exceeds that of cigarettes in the informal economy. One soup can be traded for five or six “tailor-
made” (i.e., packaged) cigarettes—an exchange of $0.59 in soup for roughly $2.00 in cigarettes.
31
Additionally, though the price of entire packs of cigarettes is high, the price per single cigarette
(the standard unit when tobacco served as informal money) is less than a single pack of soup in
the commissary. The true value of a soup is not in its dollar price in the commissary, but rather
its role as sustenance. This is further demonstrated in other prisons which rely on different food
products as money (e.g., Harwell 2010; Paynter 2011; Yglesias 2008).
Discussion and conclusions
Constraints imposed by carceral institutions—restricting prisoner movement, schedules,
possessions, identities (Foucault 1977; Goffman 1961; Irwin 2005)—seemingly strip prisoners of
agency. In the era of mass incarceration and expanding neoliberal approaches to punishment, the
prison has extended this deprivation by cutting services and programs, and by shifting costs to
the imprisoned (Levingston 2007). However, “the resulting tension between need and lack
produces…‘folk ingenuity’” (Jackson 1966, 243). This paper has explored a prominent example
of such ingenuity: In addition to turning to black markets for goods deemed unreliable through
formal channels (Karpova 2013), prisoners have adapted the very form of prison money in a
manner aligning with prevailing logic of resistance behind bars.
The shift from cigarettes to ramen as informal currency reflects changes in the
contemporary penal landscape more broadly. Though neoliberalism has been the dominant
political-economic logic in the U.S. for some time, evolution in neoliberal approaches to
punishment in recent years has precipitated changes in the quality of care behind bars as well as
in prisoner treatment and behavior. Following the Great Recession of the late 2000s, cost-
shifting practices and fees—already prevalent in that decade (Buchanan 2007; Levingston
32
2007)—greatly expanded (Aviram 2016a; 2016b). With the growth of “pay-to-stay” approaches
to incarceration (Buchanan 2007), prisoners grew to be politically and administratively treated
less as wards of the state and increasingly as consumers of institutional services (Aviram 2014),
expected to fund or supplement basic amenities (Gottschalk 2010).
Prisoner monetary practices draw heavily on the “imaginative value” of tokens (Beckert
2010)—i.e., worth derived from “imaginative connections made between goods and socially
rooted values” (p.3)—and trends in penology and prisoner roles are reflected in the money they
adopt. The cigarette, a symbolic marker of withdrawal and “cool” as well as a means to embrace
normalcy and manage stress behind bars for the prisoner-as-ward (Richmond et al. 2009),
previously reigned as the de facto prison currency. The dominant logic of resistance in the
contemporary American prison no longer privileges withdrawal in this way; rather, it emphasizes
consumption and ideals of nutrition. Today’s prisoner-as-consumer resists in part via prison
“foodways” (Godderis 2006; Smoyer 2016b; Smoyer and Lopes 2017), reclaiming control over
consumption amidst grievances and insecurities regarding the quality and quantity of state-
provided chow (Gottschalk 2006). The rise of ramen as the new informal prisoner money reflects
the saliency of the expression of autonomy through patterns and practices of consumption.
In today’s warehouse prisons, in which overt displays of conflict are less common (Irwin
2005), this development in the function of food is revealing. The choice of ramen in particular
reveals prisoner agency through “conspiring” to survive amidst deprivation (ibid.) while also
expressing consumption preferences. Beyond its role as a value-laden alternative to prison chow,
ramen noodles exhibit other characteristics that prisoners-as-consumers seek. Namely, soups
reduce information asymmetries—they are reliable in contrast to institutional food offerings
which rarely meet standards. Recall, for instance, Emmett’s frustration when his lunchmeat
33
serving weighed less than expected, or conflicts with staff over inconsistency in serving sizes as
recounted by Sammy. Unlike the chow line, ramen is standardized and predictable. As prisoners
seek certainty in their consumption, a “soup” offers confidence—dependably containing 3.0
ounces of food and approximately 400 calories per pack. Some were even willing to trade
clothing (such as the thermals that Maurice purchased) in exchange for this consistency.
Beyond the content of their meals, consumption-oriented prisoners remained concerned
with cost. Participants were acutely aware of food prices beyond prison walls, where many items
were cheaper than in the commissary store. Recall, for instance, when one participant lamented
the $0.59 price of a pack of ramen: “You can go down to [a grocery store] and they’re ten for a
dollar.” Prisoners also related complaints regarding taxpayer spending. For instance, after
highlighting discrepancies between publicly-available menus and actual chow, DS revealed the
reach of the invisible hand into prison life when he added: “I be damned if I sit here and let you
and my people on the outside—the ones that’s not committing crimes—pay [taxes] for all this
shit and be told it’s good.” Prison authorities, from his perspective, were not only complicit in
the declining quality of care, but kept taxpayers in the dark. Prisoners like DS exhibited
consumerist tendencies (frustrated with perceived misuse of funds and misrepresentation of
goods) as well as a neoliberal emphasis on self-reliance (concerned only for citizens not engaged
in criminal activity).
The role of prisoner-as-consumer—a phenomenon only recently emerging in the
literature (e.g., Aviram 2014)—is deserving of further examination. As cost-shifting trends
expand (Aviram 2016a; Buchanan 2007), in what other ways do prisoners deploy consumer
roles, and what are the implications of such trends for other practices and outlooks? Relatedly,
the effects of food currency on rates of illicit trade, contraband, and violence are deserving of
34
study. Given that, “for a tray of food, a piece of cake or pie, or a Coca-Cola…a prisoner will bust
another on the head with an iron pipe or stab him” (Cobb 1985, 80-81), how might the adoption
of food as money affect rates or forms of conflict behind bars? And, beyond physical violence,
how might the rise of ramen money impact processes of stratification and distinction, which are
tied to food access and practice (Godderis 2006; Valentine and Longstaff 1998)?
Social life invades economic practice (Zelizer 2010). Changes in prison money—
triggered by structural and economic constraints imposed by a state perceived as failing to
adequately provide—illustrate an underexplored arena in which this occurs. I have discussed
how monetary form may reflect the needs, insecurities, and motivations of economic actors, their
shared values and understandings, and the roles they adopt. The degree to which money fulfils
such a role in other “total institutional” settings is deserving of further attention. Additionally,
this shift in prison currency problematizes several of economic sociology’s classical assumptions
about money, such as its abstract contentlessness or unmalleability of form. Future lines of
research may extend classical theories of money by examining the impact of the total
institutional context on monetary features more broadly and, conversely, the effects on monetary
form on prisoners’ experience of exchange and self. Although thorough analyses of these topics
are beyond the scope of the present work, these and other questions are vital to better
understanding prisons and prisoners in the era of mass incarceration and the neoliberal state.
35
Acknowledgements: I am indebted to the prisoners and staff of Sunbelt State Penitentiary for
allowing me into their lives to conduct this research. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers and
editorial team for helping to improve this article. For helping work through ideas or providing
feedback, thanks to: Jennifer Carlson, Alex Kinney, Hannah Clarke, Simone Rambotti, Eric
Bjorklund, Karyn Light-Gibson, Andrew Davis, Jess Pfaffendorf, Erin Heinz, Morgan
Johnstonbaugh, Beksahn Jang, Kyle Puetz, Kate Freeman Anderson, Kathleen Schwartzman,
Jeff Sallaz, and Adam Reich. Finally, thanks to Clifton Collins Jr. and Gustavo Alvarez for
helping inspire this article.
Author biography: Michael Gibson-Light is a scholar of punishment, work, culture, and
inequality at the University of Arizona School of Sociology. His current research explores the
structure and practice of penal labor, drawing on an 18-month prison ethnography and 82 in-
depth interviews to investigate labor stratification behind bars and the effects of inequalities on
prisoners’ formal and informal economic prospects. Michael has published in journals including
Qualitative Sociology, Research in the Sociology of Work, and Poetics, and his research has been
covered by The Guardian, BBC, NPR, The Atlantic, USA Today, Time, Washington Post, and
over 100 other outlets internationally.
36
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i
All locations and names in this work, including that of the institution, have been anonymized. Identifying
characteristics have been minimized to protect participant identities.
ii
See Camplin (2017) for example prison chow menus.
iii
See Camplin (2017) for example commissary store lists.
45
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Ramen Politics: Informal Money and Logics of Resistance in the Contemporary

Article in Qualitative Sociology · June 2018

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Informal Money and Logics of Resistance in the Contemporary American Prison”

contexts. As prison administrative practices, institutional conditions, and legal environments

prison “foodways” in opposition to cost-shifting and deteriorating services behind bars.

in institutions across the country.

of prisoners and the changing penal landscape more broadly?

To address these emergent questions, I adopted an abductive ethnographic approach,

months of participant observation to provide an inside look into prisoner responses to

contemporary prison insecurities and prison monetary practices. In addition, 82 in-depth

these sorts of phenomena (Wacquant 2002).

Participants’ access to and consumption of cigarettes remained relatively stable,

prioritized the adoption of a withdrawn demeanor as an assertion of autonomy in the face of

tasty consumables like ramen as the new prison currency.

shared understandings of value and money (Zelizer 2010)—such as the prison.

(Karpova 2013, 4).

Cigarettes as prison money

where they are labelled contraband (Lankenau 2001).

Prison money under changing logics of prisoner resistance

Table 1. Monetary Form and Logics of Resistance Behind Bars

the assignment of guilt, approaching incarceration as a route to rehabilitation (ibid). Accordingly,

a dominant logic of prisoner resistance privileged the adoption of a “withdrawn” demeanor

an emphasis on offenders as aggregate groups threatening security as well as budgets. The

prisoner anxieties (Camplin 2017).

In this context, a new logic of resistance is observable in today’s prisons. As the

politics of consumption amidst tensions with the authorities.

practices aimed at diluting or circumventing prison power structures. Subtler expressions of

power and autonomy—such as secreting, hoarding, or preparing food against institutional

more frequent and effective (Crewe 2007; Ross 2009).

ramen—in contrast to state-provided chow—provides an opportunity to “defin[e] one’s self” in

the face of strict limitations (Camplin 2017; Godderis 2006).

as the primary form of informal money.

Collection and analysis

one when I sought to speak with them or record observations.

the potential for behavioral or operational accommodations to my presence.

To supplement observations, I conducted in-depth interviews with 69 prisoners and 13

institution—informal rules governing and limiting interactions between racial/ethnic cliques

American. No Asian prisoners were encountered during fieldwork. No significant differences

field and occasionally in interviews. I sought to triangulate findings through questioning

Punitive frugality and prisoner perceptions of nutrition

sizes in every meal were reportedly reduced.

to changes in the prisoner population and the attitudes of younger prisoners:

get $40 in store [commissary purchases] each week.

first man says. “After they leave, it’s back to normal.”

“Yup! That’s right.”

- Field notes excerpt

The irritation expressed by these men (couched in nostalgia) was common.

staff members alike agreed that portions had noticeably decreased.

transition in the management of food services:

night’s bar-be-que chicken.

separated meat product.’”

[taxes] for all this shit and be told it’s good.”

enough.” On many occasions, participants complained that “whoever is in charge” of approving

personal consumption represented a subtle yet meaningful form of resistance to total

administrative prison control (Smoyer 2016a).

past stint overseeing kitchen staff:

- Field notes excerpt

replaced the labels described by the officers.

relocation to higher security prison yards.

fist and walked off. The others nodded.

The prison ramen economy