Prison Hustles

There are many women who have family that is poor or no family so they never get money put on their commissary so they have to figure out a hustle.  For them, it is the only way to survive.  If DOC doesn't designate shampoo-deodorant-lotion then the only place to get it is canteen.  I have been a canteen worker for 3 years-in a dorm and now at Visitation.  I get paid 50.00 a month.  I think my job is the only paid one-not sure.  I love working the visitation canteen as I get to see "normal" people and kids.  The kids color for me and I tape their pictures to the wall outside my canteen.

Any type of hustle can land you in confinement (like jail).  Prison rules are that you cannot give another inmate anything as it is considered a gift and a gift is considered money.  When you are forced to find a hustle because you need soap that rule goes out the window.  Women need shampoo, sanitary pads, extra toilet paper so they need to have a hustle. 

There are many kitchen hustles like selling condiments, fresh lettuce and things like that. The worst job on the compound is the kitchen or "chow hall".  The kitchen has no air-conditioning, and poor food keeping and prep habits.  I only eat there when they have real chicken for dinner and even that is suspect.  Nothing is clean from the half-washed trays to the smelly cups to the "what is that?" food on the tray.  All the boxes that come off of the culinary truck say, "for institutional use only".  That seems like a very scary and dire warning to me.  It is probably something we don't even want to know.  I am blessed because I don't have to eat at the chow hall because my mom and sister put money on my commissary account and I make my own concoctions.  It is amazing what you can make in prison out of food items that you would never think go together.  They just started giving us fruit 3 x a week again, otherwise the food is unidentifiable except for the cabbage which they use for everything.

As I said I now get the "religious diet" called RDP which comes in a bag and it has sardines, cabbage, bread, cooked beans, a couple of saltines and a fruit and sometimes we get fresh cherry tomatoes.  Small portions of course.  When I eat RDP, it is like a gourmet meal on the outside.
 
There are many hustles but I will refrain, except the biggest hustle is cigarettes.  You cannot smoke on the compound, but guards and inmates do smoke.  The cigarettes come onto the compound through visitation or officers.  One cigarette is 10.00.  One cigarette can be broken down into 6 good compound cigarettes. A compound cigarette is he width of 2 lollipop sticks put together and the length of your ring finger.  The filter is a piece of rolled up cardboard.  The rolling paper is the paper that our TP comes wrapped in that we get once a week.  Most women smoke on the compound (I don't-am into being healthy).  The dorm I lived in smelled like a bar and the officers just got used to it.  No one says anything unless we get an officer who complains he can't breathe.  As long as they don't physically see you with a cigarette in your hand nothing happens.

There are worse things-drugs- brought in by who knows?  They just put an airport scanner in where you put your belongings onto a conveyer that goes through x-ray for the guards because so much contraband was coming in.

When I worked compound canteen, it was the most stressful job ever because the only thing the inmates have to look forward to is shopping.  People are agitated, threaten to get canteen shut down if they are not first, fighting, threatening the canteen worker.  For the inmates canteen is everything.  The only thing to look forward to.

There are many women who are too old to hustle or mentally slow who are indigent but cannot hustle and those women rely on a hopeful hand-out every now and then.  It is very sad.  Read Ms. Kat's story on my mom's website www.inmateslivesmatter.com.