[Illustration by Martin Robles]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe tailor<\/h2>\n I met \u201cJack\u201d, who works in a pantry, a man who prefers to keep his real name to himself for fear of reprisals. His job at the prison involves preparing meals for fellow prisoners. He works 365 days a year with no holidays, no sick time, and each month is paid a little over $100 into his prison account.<\/p>\n
Jack doesn\u2019t get money from his family on the outside. Most prisoners don\u2019t. In fact, many actually support their loved ones outside through their prison hustles.<\/p>\n
Jack stitches survival together with a needle and thread. He hems khakis, tapers shirts, and mends shoes for stamps. This prison currency is bought through the commissary or traded among prisoners as hard currency for buying and selling. One book has 10 stamps and costs about $8 in the commissary, but can cost more when traded between prisoners.<\/p>\n
Two books of stamps get you a tailored \u201cset\u201d (pants and a shirt or two shirts), and it\u2019s four stamps (about $3) to raise your pant cuffs above the ankles, a popular request among Muslim brothers here. Jack won\u2019t say how much he earns a month, but it\u2019s more than what he makes prepping meals.<\/p>\n
Water is his biggest expense. \u201cThe tap water here burns my stomach,\u201d he told me. \u201cTastes like metal.\u201d<\/p>\n
He buys a case of 24, 16oz (470ml) bottles of water for $6 (about eight stamps). Only three cases are allowed per inmate at a time, and we can only order from the commissary twice a month. He tries to ration, but when he runs out \u2013 or water isn\u2019t available at the commissary \u2013 he needs to fork out more money to buy bottles from other prisoners who sell at higher prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe funny thing,\u201d he said, not smiling, \u201cis that they [the prison] give the officers water filters.\u201d<\/p>\n[Illustration by Martin Robles]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe corner store<\/h2>\n On another tier, Josh runs what you might call a corner store without a corner. He sells and trades food for a profit \u2013 chili pouches or blocks of cheese from the commissary, peppers smuggled out of the kitchen. The commissary may run out of items or place limits on how many prisoners can buy, so the prisoners go to Josh. But they also go to him for other things \u2013 staplers for legal work, shoes, or cash. They trade prison stamps for their purchase. The exchange rate and prices fluctuate depending on supply and demand, but there\u2019s always a profit. A pack of 24 cookies bought at the commissary for $4 may sell for anywhere between $5 and $12. It\u2019s often more profitable to sell loose cookies.<\/p>\n
Josh\u2019s system is pure street business. He buys in bulk from the kitchen workers who steal small quantities from the pantries, and when a prisoner makes an order, he smuggles the item to them immediately \u2013 usually via a \u201cunit runner\u201d. He sells with a markup, and offers credit at higher rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a cat-and-mouse game,\u201d Josh explained. \u201cThe trick is to never keep anything in your cell. Too many haters.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201chaters\u201d might snitch, and get Josh in trouble. Sometimes, snitching itself is a hustle where police recruit a prisoner to spy and provide them with food, which they, in turn, sell.<\/p>\n
Josh\u2019s hustle lets him buy gifts for his children and cancer awareness T-shirts for his recovering mother, and keeps his phone account alive so he can speak to them.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s 52-year-old Martin Robles, who can fix anything. I call him \u201cMr Fix It\u201d. He can do it all: fans, electronics, clothing. In the summer, when fans burn out, he bypasses the fuse (which often breaks due to power fluctuations) for the price of two books of stamps. \u201cYou have to spend money to make money,\u201d he said, explaining the cost of oil, glue, and sandpaper \u2013 the tools of his trade. He didn\u2019t want to reveal how much he makes, but he is sought after in prison. He says his hustle isn\u2019t about survival so much as keeping his hands busy and his dignity intact.<\/p>\n
The hustles keep turning<\/h2>\n Each of these men works in the official prison economy, and then works again in the shadow one. In both, they are underpaid, undersupplied, and overwatched. The hustle isn\u2019t about greed. It\u2019s about staying alive, staying connected, and, sometimes, sending a birthday gift to a goddaughter to remind her, and more importantly, yourself, that you still exist beyond these walls.<\/p>\n
In here, we don\u2019t have much. What we do have is time, pressure and the kind of hunger that sharpens the mind. So we make do. We turn scraps into tools, boredom into ritual. Behind these walls, necessity will keep birthing inventions. And the hustles will keep turning, one quiet transaction at a time.<\/p>\n
This is the second story in a three-part series on how prisoners are taking on the US justice system through law, prison hustles and hard-won education.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nRead the first story here: How I\u2019m fighting the US prison system from the inside<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nTariq MaQbool<\/strong> is a prisoner at New Jersey State Prison (NJSP), where he has been held since 2005. He is a contributor to various publications, including Al Jazeera English, where he has written about the trauma of\u00a0solitary confinement (he has spent a total of more than two years in isolation) and what it means to be a Muslim prisoner\u00a0inside a US prison.<\/p>\nMartin Robles<\/strong> is also a prisoner at NJSP. These illustrations were made using lead and coloured pencils. As he has limited art supplies, Robles used folded squares of toilet paper to blend the pigments into different shades and colours.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
There\u2019s an old saying in Urdu: Zaroorat ijaad ki maa hai (necessity is the mother of all inventions). I would often hear it as a child growing up in Pakistan. I\u2019ve always been fascinated by how some phrases leap across languages without losing their truth. You see, survival has a universal dialect, and here, behind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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