I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Apr 21) in TORINO, then Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!
Today in "Capitalists Hate Capitalism" news: The Appeal has published the first-ever survey of national prison commissary prices, revealing just how badly the prison profiteer system gouges American's all-time, world-record-beating prison population:
Like every aspect of the prison contracting system, prison commissaries – the stores where prisoners are able to buy food, sundries, toiletries and other items – are dominated by private equity funds that have bought out all the smaller players. Private equity deals always involve gigantic amounts of debt (typically, the first thing PE companies do after acquiring a company is to borrow heavily against it and then pay themselves a hefty dividend).
The need to service this debt drives PE companies to cut quality, squeeze suppliers, and raise prices. That's why PE loves to buy up the kinds of businesses you must spend your money at: dialysis clinics, long-term care facilities, funeral homes, and prison services.
Prisoners, after all, are a literal captive market. Unlike capitalist ventures, which involve the risk that a customer will take their business elsewhere, prison commissary providers have the most airtight of monopolies over prisoners' shopping.
Not that prisoners have a lot of money to spend. The 13th Amendment specifically allows for the enslavement of convicted criminals, and so even though many prisoners are subject to forced labor, they aren't necessarily paid for it:
Six states ban paying prisoners anything. North Carolina caps prisoners' pay at one dollar per day. Nationally, prisoners earn $0.52/hour, while producing $11b/year in goods and services:
So there's a double cruelty to prison commissary price-gouging. Prisoners earn far less than any other kind of worker, and they pay vastly inflated prices for the necessities of life. There's also a triple cruelty: prisoners' families – deprived of an incarcerated breadwinner's earnings – are called upon to make up the difference for jacked up commissary prices out of their own strained finances.
So what does prison profiteering look like, in dollars and sense? Here's the first-of-its-kind database tracking the costs of food, hygiene items and religious items in 46 states:
https://theappeal.org/commissary-database/
Prisoners rely heavily on commissaries for food. Prisons serve spoiled, inedible food, and often there isn't enough to go around – prisoners who rely on the food provided by their institutions literally starve. This is worst in prisons where private equity funds have taken over the cafeteria, which is inevitable accompanied by swingeing cuts to food quality and portions:
So you have one private equity fund starving prisoners, and another that's gouging them on food. Or sometimes it's the same company. Keefe Group, owned by HIG Capital, provides commissaries to prisons whose cafeterias are managed by other HIG Capital portfolio companies like Trinity Services Group. HIG also owns the prison health-care company Wellpath – so if they give you food poisoning, they get paid twice.
When prison commissaries gouge on food, no part of the inventory is spared, even the cheapest items. In Florida, a packet of ramen costs $1.06, 300% more inside the prison than it does at the Target down the street:
America's prisoners aren't just hungry, they're also hot. The climate emergency is sending temperatures in America's largely un-air-conditioned prisons soaring to dangerous levels. Commissaries capitalize on this, too: an 8" fan costs $40 in Delaware's Sussex Correctional Institution. In Georgia, that fan goes for $32 (but prisoners are not paid for their labor in Georgia pens). And in scorching Texas, the commissary raised the price of water by 50% last summer:
Toiletries are also sold at prices that would make an airport gift-shop blush. Need denture adhesive? That's $12.28 in an Idaho pen, triple the retail price. 15% of America's prisoners are over 55. The Keefe Group – sister company to the "grossly inadequate" healthcare company Wellpath – operates that commissary. In Oregon, the commissary charges a 200% markup on hearing-aid batteries. Vermont charges a 500% markup on reading glasses. Imagine spending decades in prison: toothless, blind, and deaf.
Then there's the religious items. Bibles and Christmas cards are surprisingly reasonable, but a Qaran will run you $26 in Vermont, where a Bible is a mere $4.55. Kufi caps – which cost $3 or less in the free world – go for $12 in Indiana prisons. A Virginia prisoner needs to work for 8 hours to earn enough to buy a commissary Ramadan card (you can buy a Christmas card after three hours' labor).
Prison price-gougers are finally facing a comeuppance. California's new BASIC Act caps prison commissary markups at 35% (California commissaries used to charge 63-200% markups):
And prison tech monopolist Securus has been driven to the brink of bankruptcy, thanks to the activism of Worth Rises and its coalition partners:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/
When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Prisons show us how businesses would treat us if they could get away with it.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
The feast of my main man, St. Lawrence, is coming up!
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JOKE-OGRAPHY:
1. According to tradition, St. Lawrence was a deacon in Rome in the first few centuries of the early Church. He was young, but he suffered persecution by the government. He knew his time was near, so he gave all the riches of the Church to the poor. When he was brought in by the prefect of Rome and questioned about where the treasures of the Church were hidden, Lawrence replied that the poor were the Church's true treasure. The prefect found that trick so clever that he had Lawrence grilled alive to death.
2. In this cartoon, the prefect declares that he's going to have Lawrence grilled if he doesn't reveal the location of the Church's physical treasures. Lawrence is confused, because "grill" has a few meanings, and two fit in this context. Since Rome is known for brutal executions, it's safe to assume the more violent interpretation is the correct one.
Shae's little legs kick and squirm in the air, trying to maneuver himself away from the hot steam that surges up at him from the pot below.
The only, only thing keeping him from dropping is a clothespin. It clamps his wings painfully together and his wings holding all his weight strains his back...yet if the witch holding it lets go, things will get a whole lot worse.
"Boil the fairy for one minute - without killing it," the witch reads from her spellbook. "That will be difficult...but not impossible..."
She taps Shae's belly with her wand and an odd feeling washes over him. He trembles at her words. Boil...
He looks down. The pot is just over half full of water laced with various herbs and oils. It bubbles noisily. Below it he can just make out the edges of the flame of the stove.
"That should do it...here we go."
"No, no!"
The clip opens.
Shae falls.
The moment he hits the water he's engulfed in scalding agony. His screams are muffled as water fills his lungs. His little body bobs and tumbles about, pushed here and there by the bubbling water and the witch's spoon as she stirs.
The searing heat is too much to bear. It's a relief to pass out, to not feel his skin burn and redden.
And whatever the witch did to him...it worked. He survives.
Entry 12: I’ve been starting to add these tidbits at the beginning of these because I sometimes wonder if what goes on in my life, no matter how simple, is affecting these dreams I’m having. It has been humid as hell out this autumn and it’s been hard to even get any sleep in the first place. But I managed to pass out somehow and of course there was another vivid dream awaiting me.I was in what felt like some kind of box with only a few couple inches to spare for me to move around. Not only was it cramped, but it was so dark inside that I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face. There was no way to even sit up in the box and I had to be on my hands and knees. All around me it began to get warmer, like a dry kind of heat. A red glow came with it, brightening around and underneath me. I started to get really sweaty and overheated, but at least I could see somewhat now. As the light grew brighter, the heat grew with it. Now it was really uncomfortable. The light burned my eyes and the heat did the job of now burning me. It was now bright enough for me to notice something I hadn't before. On one side of this box was a window to see outside. Lucky for me it was the side my head was facing. Peering out I could see an average, modern kitchen. Nothing much to it all. I pushed on the window but nothing budged in the slightest. Not only that, but it also burned my hands really badly which I really should've expected. It didn’t really click with me right away. The burning heat, the bright lights, and the kitchen on the outside. It felt like I was being cooked alive. Then I understood. This whole time I had been in an oven and this searing heat wasn’t going anywhere. It was getting worse and worse. My brain couldn’t function and I started to not be able to see from all the blaring light of the oven. My eyes watered to keep them from drying up. My insides all felt like they were on fire. Finally I shut my eyes tightly and just let it happen. I heard the sound of timer go off. I was back in my bed, underneath me was damp with my sweat.
