How Overpriced Are Basic Necessities in Prison?

Apart from receiving basics like soap, toilet paper, a tooth brush and tooth paste as well as clothes and three meals per day, prisoners in the U.S. largely have to pay for additional food, religious and hygiene items themselves. And while inflation has driven up prices across the board, prison commissaries often add a premium that goes far beyond regular price increases.

For example, a packet of instant ramen by the brand Maruchan currently costs $0.20 at Walmart, while commissaries in state prisons around the country charge as much as $0.65 for the same serving size. This is according to data aggregated by reporters Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg and Ethan Corey at The Appeal for the first-ever database on commissary prices in the U.S. This premium is hard to bear for many prisoners due to average prison job wages topping out at a maximum of $0.52 per hour as evidenced by an ACLU report from 2022.

Statista calculations show prison laborers in regular jobs, which include maintenance or working the kitchen, need to work an average of 1.6 hours to afford one packet of the most commonly offered state-wide ramen variant. For a cup of mac & cheese, inmates have to work more than a half-day on average. In terms of personal hygiene, many items considered basic necessities to maintain personal health are even less affordable for prisoners. A tube of toothpaste or a deodorant stick, for example, take around one and a half days to earn based on the average hourly wage.

Looking at state-level averages, many items become even less affordable to regular inmates. For example, the average hourly wage for a prisoner in Louisiana is $0.06, while a packet of ramen costs $0.57. While states like Texas, which don't pay their prison workers at all, argue that the labor of incarcerated people pays for their room and board, companies outside the prison walls also profit from the cheapest workforce in the country. An in-depth Associated Press investigation on forced labor in prison "tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market", with companies like McDonald's or Walmart profiting off this arrangement.