The emergence of ramen noodles as a sort of cell-block currency in place of cigarettes is evidence of what Michael Gibson-Light, a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona, calls the new “punitive frugality” that has taken hold in a prison system that is intent on cutting costs.
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Gibson-Light’s study relied on the anecdotal experiences of 60 inmates over the course of a year in an unnamed state prison in the US Sun Belt region.
Ramen noodles are becoming an increasingly valuable commodity in US prisons-where they are even more popular than tobacco.
“Punitive frugality is not a formal prison policy”, Gibson-Light wrote in his study.
In 2014 the US Federal Bureau of Prisons officially banned smoking and possession of tobacco in any form by prison inmates. Ramen was even used in poker games or gambling on football pools. And while some prisoners subsist for years on end consuming bland or processed food products, other states have augmented their prison food programs to include inmate-farmed vegetable gardens that are not only a nutritious “cost-effective food source” that “are seen as a way to save money on healthcare for prisoners struggling with diabetes, hypertension, and other ailments”, but are also breakthrough socialization and skill-building opportunities for inmates. “Services are cut back and many costs are passed on to inmates in an effort to respond to calls to remain both tough on crime and cost effective”. An increase in the value of ramen noodles soon followed, with inmates using the soup mix as the main currency in trades, rather than tobacco.
In the murky prison economy, Gibson-Light observed that six packets of ramen, worth $0.59 at the commissary, could be exchanged for an entire set of thermal underwear, worth $11.30. “The use of cigarettes as money in United States prisons happened in American Civil War military prisons and likely far earlier”.
He notes tobacco has been the predominant prison currency since at least the Civil War, and that this change has “potentially serious implications”.
The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.
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The study is entitled “Must Work for Food: The Politics of Nutrition and Informal Economy in an American Prison”.
