‘They’ll kill for it’: Ramen has become the black-market currency in American prisons

Instant ramen is delicious, easy to cook, ludicrously cheap and surprisingly nonperishable.

For all those reasons and more, the noodles are overtaking tobacco as the preferred underground currency that inmates use in prisons, according to a new study by Michael Gibson-Light, a doctoral candidate in the University of Arizona School of Sociology.

"Prisoners are so unhappy with the quality and quantity of prison food that they receive that they have begun relying on ramen noodles — a cheap, durable food product — as a form of money in the underground economy," Gibson-Light said in a news release Monday. "Because it is cheap, tasty and rich in calories, ramen has become so valuable that it is used to exchange for other goods."

Over a year, Gibson-Light interviewed 60 male inmates and staff members in an unidentified state-run facility as part of a larger investigation into how prisoners were responding to declining prison services. He labeled what he found "punitive frugality" — that is, as corrections budgets shrink, the cost of care is shifting onto prisoners and their support networks.

Enter the humble ramen brick.

Inmates often used instant ramen packs to barter for other food items, clothes, hygiene products and even services, Gibson-Light observed. At times, he said, he saw prisoners put down ramen packs, or "soups," as literal bargaining chips during card games. According to the study, one inmate put it succinctly: "Soup is money in here."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/23/soup-is-money-in-here-ramen-has-become-the-black-market-currency-in-american-prisons/

It might be more convenient to use the little flavoring sachets, lol.

Racist!

& Snob too!

‘They’ll kill for it’: Ramen has become the black-market currency in American prisons

‘They’ll kill for it’: Ramen has become the black-market currency in American prisons

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

Via AnCaps: Law & Enforced Unnatural Order