Inflation! Even Pennies Count in Prison

Have you ever pondered how inflation affects those far removed from the free market? Join us as we explore the hidden impact of inflation on incarcerated individuals, as shared by Jeremy Fontanez -- currently living behind bars in a federal prison in Maryland.  A gifted artist and writer, Jeremy pulls back the curtain on the often overlooked aspect of prison life, revealing how even the bare necessities can be beyond reach. He offers a glimpse into the fundamental role of the commissary, a store within the federal prison walls, and how it fills the gaps left by the spartan supplies provided by the prison.

We also delve into the financial struggles faced by prisoners against the backdrop of ever-rising inflation. Jeremy's poignant story brings alive the harsh reality of how a minor price hike can drastically affect those surviving on limited funds and scarce job opportunities. 

But there are possible solutions. We discuss the potential of Sen. Cory Booker's S.516 bill, legislation designed to ensure that prisoners are paid a fair wage for their labor. 

Follow this podcast so you'll be informed when new episodes are uploaded (twice a month). Meanwhile, read more stories and learn how you can contribute to reform; visit MoreThanOurCrimes.

Chapters

• 0:09 Inflation's Impact on Incarcerated People
• 10:59 Inflation's Impact on Prisoners' Finances
• 22:21 Supporting Bill for Criminal Justice Reform

Transcript

SHAKA LONG: Hey everybody, this is Shaka, one of the co-hosts of Voices Unlocked, and I'm here with my co-host Pam Bailey, the co-founder of More Than Our Crimes, which produces this podcast. Today, we want to talk about a subject that seems like an ever-present concern, which is inflation for many millions of families. It affects the prices of everything. But what a lot of people don't really understand is that for incarcerated people, inflation is like life. It makes life so hard for incarcerated people. In fact, there's a store in every federal prison called a commissary. And a lot of times this commissary is the only means of life-giving stuff for incarcerated people. Today, Pam, would you mind sharing the story that you heard from one of the interviews that you did?

PAM BAILEY: Yeah. So today, we're featuring an interview with a gentleman named Jeremy Fontanez. He's currently incarcerated in a medium-security prison in Maryland called FCI Cumberland. And I'll tell you what, he is one of the reasons why I do this work. One of the joys of communicating with people in prison is you discover these hidden gems behind the bars. Jeremy is...You know, if you heard his sentence, you'd assume he's like some kind of monster, right? Because he's serving a very long sentence, until 2032 in federal prison, and then he has like a life sentence in Pennsylvania. But I have to tell you, if you know him today, he is the most intelligent, articulate, hardworking, productive, talented people I've met. I mean, I'm not talking about met in prison, but met period. He teaches art in the recreation department. And he's written an essay for More Than Our Crimes on the subject we're gonna be talking about today. 

Before I play the first segment of his interview, I want to remind our viewers and listeners how we actually do these interviews, because we're not allowed into the federal prison. They call me and it can only be for 15-minute bursts, for most of them. I actually put it on speaker and I hold a recorder up to the to the phone. So that means the sound quality isn't always the best; you may hear some noise in the background, too. And what people will also hear is this recorded voice that breaks in periodically saying that this is a call from a federal prison. Like, we don't know! Sort of funny. So, in this first segment from Jeremy, he talks about the prison commissary or store, which I'm not sure everybody realizes exists. And why it's really not a luxury; it's a necessity.

[RECORDED] JEREMY FONTANEZ: Commissary items are necessary. Because the prison will provide you with the bare minimum. And how many people can actually survive on the bare minimum, right, on a monthly basis, from month to month? When we get paid at work, when we do have a job, we only get paid once a month anyway. So, if the prison gives me a small bar of soap this week, they expect me to make that one bar of soap last for two weeks. And then two weeks later, I got to buy another small bar of soap, which goes real fast. The things that we get in here are bare minimum. So, we have to supplement our needs. Not just food, but our needs, as far as hygiene, in order to be able to get through the month in a fairly stable fashion. Otherwise, you're kind of juggling to get through and it's a struggle. 

Nobody, nobody, nobody can live comfortably, and nobody can live reasonably, on the bare minimum that's being strung along. So the commissary is a necessity, even when it comes to clothing. They give us khakis, they give us prison uniforms. But in order to be comfortable in ourselves and stuff like that, we got to buy our own shorts, we have to buy our own shirts, we have to buy our own sweatpants and buy our own shoes. We have to buy our own shoes! So commissary isn't a luxury; it's a necessity that we have to pull from.

PAM: So these stores, as you've gotten the idea already, are absolute necessities. And that's why, what I hear a lot from the people I correspond with in prison, is that when, say, one of them in a unit does something wrong, everybody gets punished. It's like collective punishment. And one of the ways they might get punished is to have their commissary privileges either taken away or restricted. Like, they may be limited to only spending a very small amount that month. And this whole episode is showing you why that's so onerous, because they could go hungry as a result. And the other thing I hear in light of that, is that [some guys] get a little business going. I know a couple of guys in prison who, because they're expecting to not be allowed to go to the commissary either as a punishment or because they're all being locked down -- you know, kept in their cells, they hoard, they buy extra food and set up their own little store so they can sell to other prisoners. Is that something that you experienced when you were in prison? Because you were in prison for how many years?

SHAKA: Yeah, I was incarcerated for 26 years. And I was only recently released, like, over a year ago. I came home in 2022. And I have direct experience in dealing with commissary restrictions. You got to realize, the prison cuisine, if you can call it that... They have a national menu, you know, from Monday to Saturday, and a lot of times, the food is of poor quality, very poor quality. I remember one time when I was working in the kitchen, I had to go to the warehouse and unload the meals for the week. And I'd read the boxes in there. They literally said not for human consumption! You know, we didn't even know what we're eating. A lot of the foods there were beyond the expiration date, and we used to take it to our supervisor. And he'd say, "Well, it says, 'best used by.' It doesn't mean it's spoiled. It just means, optimally, it's best to use it before this date. We can sill feed it."  

So, this is the food they're serving to the general population [in prison]. And a lot of times, you know, the guys can't eat this food. So, your only means of really surviving is through the commissary. You know, and unfortunately, a lot of the products in the commissary are based on high sodium, full of sugar. They have a few supplements, like for protein. The guys have a joke: What's the common denominator between a college student and an inmate? It's the ramen noodles. And actually, sometimes that's all you can really eat. It's crazy. When I came home, I went to the store and a pack of ramen noodle soup is like 25 cents. And for the prisoners, it's 40 to 50 cents, you know. And those huge price differences affects these guys. Because when you only have an institutional job, right, you may only get paid $5, or $5.49, literally, a month. 

I used to see guys, you know, when they get their institution check. And they's come back [from the store] with a bag with three soups, a bar of soap and a pack of sardines or mackerel. And that's got to last them for a whole month. The quality of food is so poor, what can you do? Everybody comes from different economic backgrounds. So some guys can't go to the store, like you said. Or there might be a riot. Let's say an incarcerated guy attacks an officer. They will punish the whole compound. So, you can only spend $25 a month. You know, that's severe and now you have to prioritize your needs. Do I buy commissary? Do I buy food, or writing utensils, or stamps? And there's definitely price gouging, how they raise the prices. And they make matters worse when they raise the price, because they don't increase the work pay.

PAM: We're gonna talk a lot more about that later. In this next segment from Jeremy, he's gonna talk about the food part specifically. And actually, we could do an entire podcast episode on food, and maybe we will in the future. But he's gonna talk a little bit about why... People might think that you're buying luxury items at the prison store, but he says no. In fact, I think most of what they buy is food. So let's let's take a listen.

[RECORDED] JEREMY: The BOP [federal Bureau of Prisons] is required to provide us with the bare minimum of caloric intake on a daily basis. So, the bare minimum is 2,000 calories a day. However, if you're a grown man, it's not enough to get you through the day.  Each tray is kind of small. Like I said, a bare minimum. So, by the time you've done with the tray, you're still hungry, right? If you want to fill up, you can fill up, but you have to eat a lot of carbs. So they carb us to death: a lot of rice, a lot of potatoes...and it's all the simple carbs, the bad type of carbs. So a lot of us overeat just to kind of have a full stomach. But it's not healthy. The protein we get is hard to get from the chow hall because they monitor it real tightly.

So, if I want to eat a really well-balanced meal, I have to be able to buy something off the commissary to kind of supplement my diet so that I'm not going hungry at night, so that I'm not eating too many carbs. Because like I said, we're beIng carbed out all the time. And if you're health conscious, the food here isn't all that... [This call is from a federal prison]. My only way of feeling like I'm full is to eat a lot of carbs. And that's doubly unhealthy. So if I want to be able to be health conscious, and exercise, I have to be able to supplement my diet properly. And that comes from certain items in the commissary. And those particular items are already more expensive than everything else.

SHAKA: Wow. What Jeremy hit on, it resonates so much with me. It actually brought me back a few years, after being removed from that space. I had to call home to my family, you know, and I'd feel kind of ashamed. Because, you know, already my family's doing this life sentence with me. I understand that. I mean, I've been there. You know, especially with the aspect of inflation and the impact on cost of living for your mom, your other loved ones. I remember when they were paying damn near $5 [a gallon] for gas. You know, my mom was telling me how eggs were like going up. She tries to eat as healthy as she can, but organic eggs might be $12 or something. And then you have to turn around and have this conversation, "Hey, Mom, do you mind sending me $50?" You know, that's kind of gut wrenching. You really have to swallow your pride.

Because sometimes, you know, especially during the point in my life where I was doing a lot of pro se litigation and spending hundreds of dollars sending out these packages of legal briefs, and filings, whatever. You know, I had to turn around and ask my mother for, like, $50 to $100 or something, and she gave it. You might have $100 in your account, and when you go to the store, you might spend like $99.89, and then you come back to your cell with this bag of a bunch of soups, rice, protein, multivitamins. 

And also it's not only that. People don't understand that in addition to your food, you also have to buy your own over-the-counter medications. You have to buy your own ibuprofen, your own pain, fever and other medicines you may need. You have to pay that for yourself through the commissary. So, you know, this is very hard. And then, my heart goes out as I listen to Jeremy when I think about a lot of guys who don't have that family support. It was really bad to see that, especially guys who don't have a GED. Because when you don't have a GED in the federal system, they cannot pay you over maintenance pay, which is $5.49. And that's the only means that they may have to go to the store every month. So it's very, you know, gut wrenching, just to relive those moments. I see those faces of those guys, trying to call home, from my own experience. So, you know, what Jeremy said hit me, hit me hard. 

PAM: Yeah, well, you know, More Than Our Crimes has more than 900 individuals in our network now. And I have to tell you, I come into contact with a lot of individuals who don't have family members or don't have jobs, and they won't ask me for money -- well, some of them do -- but many won't ask me. And I hear these stories about how they can't afford commissary or emails, etc. I want to send them money but, as you can imagine, that can become quite a burden. But yeah, it breaks my heart when I hear these stories. You mentioned earlier about prices going up, and when we hear that they're going up maybe 10 cents or 25 cents, it can sound like just a little bit. But people need to realize that when you have so little money...Like, you just mentioned that, for instance, you may be getting paid $5 a month or something. Then, 5 cents, 10 cents, 15 cents... 

SHAKA: No, one cent! I remember...Listen, I remember when I first came in, going back to the soup. Soup was 15 cents. I came to jail in 1996. Soup was usually 15 cents. Before I got released it was 80 cents, no exaggeration. Stamps; I remember stamps were 25 cents when I first came in. Now a forever stamp is 60 cents. 60 cents. So, one cent is a determination of whether I can buy a product to keep me from going hungry. 

For those of us who have relatively healthy incomes, we can dismiss a small raise, but they can't. So, this is what Jeremy talks about.

[RECORDED] JEREMY: Everybody is talking about inflation out there, and we're watching that news from in here. And it does affect us here in prison. And the reason is because prices in the commissary, they're affected by everything that goes on out there as far as inflation goes. So, the distributors that the commissary uses have to raise their prices, and then the prices are raised for us here. And we're already paying a 30% markup on every item because the BOP charges us 30% for the Inmate Trust Fund, they call it, which is supposed to be a fund that goes toward other inmate needs. We don't really see that a lot of times, but I remember 20 years ago, I used to be able to spend $100 on commissary and get a nice big bag of [this call is from a federal prison]. Now, I spend 100 dollars on commissary, if I ever have that much, and I barely get a quarter of what I used to be able to get before. We have a $360 spending limit for the entire month, so if I'm only getting $360 worth of items, if I have that kind of money, and everything has gone up 40% since I came into prison, then I'm not getting anywhere near what I used to be able to get. 

Lately the inflation rate has been increasing really rapidly. So, from week to week, things are changing for us in here. It's hard for us to keep up; we have to budget our own limited funds. Most of us are extremely limited in funds. So we have to budget those funds. And we have to be able to know how much we can spend for that week. And like I said, we have a limit each week that we're allowed to spend. So, if we order something based on the limit that we have, and the prices from last week, we come to this week and try to get something of the same nature and it's changed, because the prices have gone up already. 

SHAKA: Listening to Jeremy makes me think back to how...One of the main problems for people is accessibility to the commissary due to inflation. And then, equally, the lack of eligibility for jobs. I remember when I first came into the federal system,  that's when you get the inmate handbook. It says it's required that every inmate have a job. And technically, on paper, your case manager is gonna assign you a job. But realistically, when you got an institution that has over 1,200 people, they don't have the capacity to hire everybody. 

So, for the most part, they give you these work details. And you have to realize, like I kind of mentioned earlier, a lot of people don't have their GEDs; they didn't finish school. That's a segment of the population for which the administrators say, cool, we'll just pay them $5, you know, similar to welfare. Then, for guys like myself who did complete high school or whatnot, a lot of times they just put us in the kitchen. And then you gotta realize the element of racial inequality there, because a lot of the Blacks, you know, they give us the kitchen jobs or the landscaping jobs, picking up trash in the rec yard. A lot of the well-to-do white inmates get the jobs that pay more, like HVAC, plumbing jobs, electrical jobs. Jobs where you can be around a lot of the COs [correctional officers] or be in the comfort of the commissary. 

Someone like Bernie Madoff, who swindled people out of billions of dollars, they gave him a commissary job. It's one of the highest-paying jobs. But the majority of the Black and Brown population, you know, we get the menial labor in the kitchen or working on the rec yard, which is paid no more than like $20, at the most, a month. And there are some case managers who, you know, just they don't even hire you. There's too many of us that are locked up. So many people don't have jobs, although on paper they do have jobs. And they just fall by the wayside.

PAM: Yeah, I just want to add that a mutual friend of ours, Donnie, wasn't given a job for a very long time. And he was ecstatic when he finally got one, which was cleaning the bathrooms. And actually, sometimes, even though the pay is so bad, you want to just get out the cell. It just gives you something to do to feel busy.

SHAKA: But also, don't forget that there's also a huge segment of people incarcerated who are in solitary confinement and have no jobs at all. And you have people who are on death row that have no jobs, you know. They have no way of getting any type of institutional earnings there. So I know exactly what Jeremy is talking about.

PAM: Yeah, so in this next segment, Jeremy talks about his particular prison in Maryland, and the situation there and he backs up what you just said, that most people don't have jobs. They want one; they would take any kind of money that would help.

[RECORDED] JEREMY: Actual guys who have a job? I would say maybe 20% of the prison. Figure that this institution probably has about 700 people in it, you know. I would say maybe 200 have a job. At this prison, jobs are limited. There's not a whole lot that can be done in here. When there aren't many positions that a prisoner can actually get, the better positions are highly coveted. So, it takes a long time to finally get to one of those positions, that actually pay half decent. And half decent is nowhere near what it used to be. Inflation eats up the pay. 

Years ago, I used to be able to make $120 a month, at the most, at a particular job, depending on my position. Well, in 2010, they cut that in half; they actually cut the hours that we were allowed to work. Now the highest I can make at a regular prison job is $84 a month. With $84 a month, I have to pay for my email credits, I have to pay for my telephone calls, I have to buy my hygiene items. And if I'm lucky, have enough left over to pay for my own stamps. So once you get these particular personal needs, there's not much left over to buy anything outside of that. And again, it takes you down to the bare minimum. 

Now, a lot of people out there may think that "You're in prison, you deserve to suffer." Listen, we've been convicted of a crime, we were sentenced by a judge and our punishment is to be exiled from society, separated from our families. That is our punishment. There's nothing in the constitution that requires us to be punished on a daily basis, every time we wake up.

SHAKA; Oh, another thing, Pam, that I think is equally important. There's a segment of the inmate population that nobody really talks about, and that's the people being detained for illegal entry, immigration. You know, when I was in USP Lee County and Atwater, in a maximum-security penitentiary, there were guys doing time just for illegal entry. And they didn't have jobs at all. So, a lot of them guys, they rely on cleaning other inmates' cells, fixing shoes or clothes, or making paintings...they aren't official jobs, they're just existing in that way. And it's it's heartbreaking because you know, these guys, they come into America for a better life and get locked up for it and get like five years. And then basically the BOP is like a channeling system for ICE because they do their time for illegal entry, then they just go into detention,

PAM: I don't think people realize that. Our impression is that these immigrants go into a detention center. They're held there until they're deported. We don't realize that they're actually held in a federal prison.

SHAKA: Yes. I mean, there's so many Mexicans, El Salvadorians, Cubans, Haitians. I mean, so many people just for immigration crimes, illegally entering, you know, and because they're undocumented or whatever, they don't get jobs. They don't have any job. They're just literally being housed for however long the BOP determines and then shipped to ICE.

PAM: A lot of what we've been talking about today is gloomy facts about prison. So, I'm always heartened when I hear about people in Congress who are willing to introduce reforms. We have a bad situation in Congress right now, given the rising rate of crime everybody's talking about, so I'm not optimistic that significant reforms will pass. But you know, it takes a long time to get bills passed. Usually they have to be reintroduced several times before they can become law.

And I'm actually really heartened that Sen. Cory Booker from New Jersey introduced a bill that would actually require that people working in federal prisons be paid a fair wage. That is major. You know, of all the reforms that have been introduced before, not too many focus on the unequal..actual continuation of slavery, really, in prison. So this was amazing that Sen. Booker would take this issue on. Even if it doesn't have a chance to pass, if people in Congress know there is support for this, that's really important. So I would encourage listeners and viewers to write to their senators, and indicate that they should support Sen. Booker's bill. I think S. 516 is the bill number.

SHAKA: I think it's very important that people understand that 92% of these guys who are incarcerated are eventually returning back to society. What better way to increase public safety, if you have an individual that's currently incarcerated, but already thinking like a citizen; he's a wage earner. And not only that, he's working a job that's paying minimum wage. He's saving his money, right. And he's coming home. Because you know, the first 72 hours is the most crucial time for a person who's getting re-acclimated into society, and determines if they recidivate. 

Imagine, you know, your immediate concern is food, shelter and clothing. So if you come home and you got a couple thousand dollars because you saved up, you can provide immediate shelter, buy clothing. You won't be a burden, you can actually come back into society and be in the position to be an immediate contributor to your family household. That person doesn't have an incentive to commit another crime. So that bill that Cory Booker...Shout out to C.B. I met him in person with FAMM a few months ago, and man, he's an outstanding congressman. I salute him. Please, man, we need to have support for that bill.

PAM: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so do you want to close out the podcast episode?

SHAKA: I hate to leave you all, but sorry, we gotta go. Man, if you liked this episode, please rate, review, subscribe to the platform that you want. You know, we are here to basically share the stories of guys inside to basically promote conversation, because conversation brings a solution to this problem of criminal justice reform. And I'm honored to be here with Pam. A shout out to Rob Barton, one of the cofounders of More Than Our Crimes, and to all the men still inside and the people who are outside You know, we are that beacon of light making sure your loved ones won't be forgotten. Thank you.