Prison Currency: Soups, Stamps, and Survival

When Remie was deep into his prison sentence, he found himself navigating a complex economic system most people never see. Each cellblock operated with its own thriving GDP—thousands of dollars in transactions flowing through a network of hustlers, entrepreneurs, and survivors every month.

The prison currency system reveals a fascinating parallel economy where food becomes more valuable, ramen noodle soups function as the standard unit—like dollar bills—and bags of coffee and Little Debbies serve as higher denominations for bigger purchases. The more exotic or rare the commissary item, the higher its trading value, creating investment opportunities where seasonal snacks become valuable commodities.

This episode offers rare insight into how alternative economies function in closed systems and why understanding prison economics matters for successful reentry. Whether you're curious about life behind bars or interested in how underground markets operate, this exploration of prison currency will change how you think about value, exchange, and economic adaptation.

Want to hear more stories from inside? Email questions to stories@lockdownlegacy.com or find us on social media to continue the conversation about prison life, reentry challenges, and everything in between.

Chapters

• 0:00 Life Updates and Country Living
• 6:12 Prison Economy Introduction
• 10:06 Food as Currency
• 14:39 Tattoos and Hooch Business
• 21:27 Cash, Credit, and Consequences
• 28:08 Prison Economy's Impact on Reentry

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:04

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Lockdown Legacy. Of course, I'm your host, remy Jones, and today, once again, I'm all alone. But no worries, man, you know you're always in for a good one when you're in my hands, right? So, first off, I just kind of want to slow roll into this man Updates on my life. First, one of the reasons why I'm solo today is because DJ is. She's on a plane, man. She's going to a conference in, I don't know, denver, something like that. So everybody, you know, keep hearing your prayers, safe travels and whatnot. But that means that I'm here not alone, totally, but that means that me and my co-parent, jacob we got the four crazy little ones to ourselves Pray for the dads. Y'all Pray for the dads because we have 100% all on our plate. But we got this.

Speaker 1: 2:08

In other news, though, this was the first week that we really got outside. You know, the weather's been warm, the rain's been, you know, at a minimum, and we really got to start tackling these home projects at the new house. And my goodness, when you say you really got to have a strong back out here, man, this country living is not for the weak or the faint of heart, you know, not only have I been actually for the last month breaking down the bee boxes from the beekeeper who owned the house before us which, by the way, we may have gotten through a few hundred, you know, I'd say two, 300 of them, but there's probably a thousand out there, you know. So we, we really haven't even put too much of a dent into it, but on top of that, this was the first week that we mowed. So that was interesting. The mowing of four acres is not something you do in an afternoon. It actually took us two days to do, both of us together. You know, dj was on the ride lawnmower, I was out there with the push mower and the weed whacker. You know we had to double team it, but we got it done. And for real, the rain was threatening to come in and just ruin the whole thing. Man, it was, uh, it was quite disappointing.

Speaker 1: 3:40

But on top of that, I got a lot of stuff going on, man. We, um, we got a barn, we got a barn and we managed to get some more of the previous owner's stuff out of there. You know he had a tractor. I mean just random stuff, you know, random stuff, man, but we managed to get it out. And you know things are moving along, man.

Speaker 1: 4:04

I got that man cave building and it's starting to empty out. So I'm starting to just randomly walk in there at times and you know, future plan, you know, just imagine and envision things how I want them. Right now it's a total mess, to be honest. But you know it's mine, it's all mine. I was very shocked when DJ told me that she wanted no parts of it. But you know, when I said I wanted a man cave when we were shopping for a house, man, I was really just thinking like a room or maybe like a corner in the garage. But now I got this whole damn building to myself and you know the mind can run rampant of what I want to do. But reality be like calm down, like I ain't got money for that, I ain't got time for that, you know. But a man can dream and you know who knows, over the next 10, 20 years it might be what I want it to be. I might surprise myself. Be what I wanted to be, I might surprise myself.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So you know, pretty much that's been the last week or the last month really is just home projects. You know DJ graduated. That took up a lot of our time in the last month. We got birthdays out the wazoo right now. You know, my youngest just turned five. Uh, my second youngest nope, I'm sorry, my second oldest is her birthday's this week coming up, wow. So, yeah, we, we doing the birthday thing and then we'll be done for a while to further close to the end of the year. But you know, life is life and we doing us over here, man, we rolling with it. So I appreciate y'all for joining in. I appreciate y'all for rolling with us. You know, shout out to the day one listeners, shout out to the new listeners. You know this is a very much appreciated thing that y'all doing. I guess y'all appreciate me too. So it's appreciation all around.

Speaker 1: 6:12

So let me get on to the next part of this thing. Man, I wanted to talk today I'm going to keep this episode brief, man, because for real it's one of them just get it and go type thing, but I wanted to talk about currency. It was actually a conversation with somebody that made me want to talk about this, because they had no idea, like, what the prison economy is like inside, you know. And so every time it was like every two minutes of this conversation, it was like their mind was blown again and they thought somehow money was just like it is out here. You know you got cash, you got credit, you got, you know, debit cards and whatnot and I was like, eh, kinda.

Speaker 1: 7:06

So in this episode I'm going to try to break down all the different forms of currency inside the prison and I'm sure I will miss some, because you know this is mostly from my own experience. But you know, in other states I'm sure they got different stuff going on In other, you know in the feds, all that stuff, other countries. But I'm going to let it be known right now money, all money, ain't the same. Money has a different value based on what it is, and in a lot of ways it is like out here. You know, you might have a credit card, it could be a visa or a MasterCard and it might be accepted everywhere. But you might have something like American Express that's people are like, nah, we don't take that. Or even some places nine days they're saying we don't take cash. Sorry, so it's the same on the inside. So just to be blatant and not leave you guys in too much uh, uh, x. What's the word I'm looking for good grief suspense wow, I was on a whole other wrong starting letter. Anyway, to not leave you in too much suspense, I'll let you know right now that food in prison is like pretty much the best bet. The best bet.

Speaker 1: 8:32

Another standard currency is stamps like pre-stamped envelopes or like a book of stamps. But it's all about who you're dealing with and what you're dealing for. So in general, pretty much you can pay anybody with a book of stamps or stamped envelopes. But certain people I mean that's not what they're into they're going to tell you stamps got half value, you know. And then if you got state-issued stamps, which you know, they could either have no value or even less value. So it depends on what situation you're in, but pretty much anybody except stamps, because I mean there was a time when I ran a store in prison and I was also shooting tattoos and so many people wanted to pay me in stamps. I don't know why they had so many, but I remember sending home a package so my family could cash in the stamps at the post office. Man, I must have had like a thousand stamped envelopes, which is crazy to imagine. But you know, hey, it's real money, you know. As far as the economy goes inside.

Speaker 1: 9:42

But food, you know we're talking about the have-nots. But food, you know we're talking about the have-nots. You know so if your choice is to go to the cafeteria you know the chow hall and eat, or to have food in your box to eat, man, everybody hands down is going to go for the food in a box. So the food in your box could potentially have a higher value than standard. You know. So if you say, like soups, ramen noodle soups, that right, there is, like the US dollar, everybody got one, everybody's seen one and it's preferred, you know. But how many soups can you convey, right? So when you need to pay a higher price, now all of a sudden we're talking about you're going to go buy a TV in $0.25, $0.50 increments with soups. Nah, we're going to need something better than that.

Speaker 1: 10:43

So you can use little debbies, bags of coffee. That's pretty much how that's like going from ones to like fives and tens. That's pretty much how that's like going from ones to like fives and tens. You know, usually coffee man holds a very high value and sweets. So if you got any type of little Debbie's, the more exotic and hard to get, the higher the value, you know, and I'm telling you, man, I have boxes of cosmic brownies Don't let it be no holiday. And they got the little zebra cakes and Christmas trees and all that because, man, people was on it. And we would actually write letters, like they call it a kite. We would write kites to the commissary, I don't know administrator or whatever, and we would ask them to get certain stuff, because we knew if they came in there with like some, you know, some caramel bars, some apple crumbles or something like that, like we was going to buy them all because they only going to have maybe a month and you ain't going to see them again for a year. So all of a sudden now you're sitting on a gold mine. It's like an investment in the stock market, you know. So that's how we got down.

Speaker 1: 11:55

You wanted anything like hey, man um, say, you don't got money on your phone. Hey, why don't you sell me a phone call? Like all right, man Um, a phone call nowadays might cost 50 cents. But you might tell somebody, you know, give me $2. Well, what that means is a $2 equivalent. They're going to go to the store. You could ask for something specific. You know, give me a bag of coffee, I'll give you a call. You know whether you got money on your phone or not, or whether you're on phone restriction, whether you need a. You know a three-way call, anything like that. You know, give me $5. Give me $2, anything like that. You don't give me five dollars, give me two dollars, whatever. So give me the equivalent.

Speaker 1: 12:32

But you know we talked about contraband in prison before we talked about the hustle. So if y'all ain't hear that, go ahead and check out the catalog, man, because we got some great episodes. But you know, I said I used to shoot tattoos. I, I shot tattoos and I ran a store. So money as far as commodities, food stamps, sodas and all that stuff. But I had it on on that plethora of it to the point where I paid the person in the cell next to me to have like basically a warehouse, to use their cell as a warehouse. I stuffed boxes of Little Debbies under their bed and stuff, you know, and I paid them weekly to house all of that. But when it came to tattoos now we're talking about I made really shooting tattoos the amount of money that some people make out here working a a really good job, you know.

Speaker 1: 13:36

Um, this was in. Let me see, this is in 2010. I would say I would say 2009 to 2011, 2012, something like that. I was shooting tattoos and I was charging people $40 an hour for, like, if it was something small and quick, minimum $40. And once I had the store, it was so stacked up I didn't want you to pay me in. You know, soups and debbies and Kool-Aid and sodas. You know I was like yo, you got to ask somebody, paypal my people some money or something you know, because you know cash app something. And so they would. You know, I would follow them up to the phone. They would call their family. Hey, you know, send X amount of money to you know this cash app account. All right, I would call my people, make sure that it, the money, went through. And then, boom, we go in there and shoot tattoos all day, all night, you know, until we hit their their limit or whatever. But my dude who ended up being my bunkie because you know we had, we had a lot, we had a block on lock man, we was enterprising Um, he made Hooch and for those of you who don't know what hooch is, it's, it has many names.

Speaker 1: 15:00

You know it's basically, um, homemade liquor. It can be made out of anything and I mean some people call it toilet wine, some people uh, uh, that it's really got a million different names. But the point is, man, like it was a hot commodity you can make it out of, we made it out of mixed fruit and you know, we bring back oranges. You know, in prison they give you the oranges that really they're not that sweet and they're kind of hard, so nobody eat them. There'd be a whole pile, maybe 20 oranges, on each table in the chow hall and we would have. We'd be paying guys to bring them back for us. You know, one guy could fit probably 20 oranges in his pants, in his shirt. You know, tuck your shirt in, put them down your shirt, tuck your pant legs into your socks, whatever, and walk back to the block and have a whole group of people walk around you so you don't, you know, stand out too much. But I mean, with that we was, we was killing the game.

Speaker 1: 16:11

I mean, you got one batch of hooch we weren't selling to the average inmate, we would go to organized gangs. You got the Crips, the Bloods, the GDs In Ohio. You got Heartless Felons. You got Aryan Brotherhood Skinheads. We had all of them. We dealt business with all of them, regardless of our own gang affiliations at the time. So we actually sold hooch to the Aryan Brotherhood, you know, and we would like they will buy the whole batch, they not buying it by the bottle, by the cup, nothing like that. So they will come like yo, I heard you got, you know, a batch coming up Like is it good, they ain't want none of the low-grade stuff. They actually wanted us to distill it. You know, in there they call it clear. So we would actually have to cook the hooch to distill it. And you know, hey, man, I got $500. I got $1,000. And they would send it like it was nothing. You know they, hey, man, I got $500, I got $1,000, and they would send it like it was nothing, you know. So that's where them PayPal transactions and stuff. But now we talking about cash equivalent, we talking about PayPal transactions.

Speaker 1: 17:30

You know, people do get credit in there and credit is king. But credit is dangerous and I'm sure y'all know that from being out here in the free world, credit is the best thing. You know, hey, you can go in somewhere and you say, hey, man, give me $100,000. And they'll be like okay, here you go, here's the terms, and guess what? You mess around and can't pay that money back. They're going to be on your ass. It's the same way it is in prison, man. If you run up a tab and I know people that have ran up extreme tabs with multiple people, to the point where they were literally in fear of their lives and they went to the administration like, hey man, I need y'all to send me to a different prison, you know. And then poof, they disappear and you got everybody sitting there. Don't think that going to a different prison gets you out of it, because people know people at other prisons and the worst thing you can do is be in a place where you don't know nobody, but people know you and they looking for you.

Speaker 1: 18:34

So, anyway, credit is a thing. You got the from the low tier. Two for one, hey man, let me get you know a bag of coffee until store day, you know, on Wednesday, or whatever. Okay, well, you know, give me two back, you know. Or or two for three, you know, give me, I'll give you two, you two, you give me three back, you know, that's usually how you make money running the store. Um, all the way up to. You know I was shooting tattoos. He's running hooch like, hey, let me get that.

Speaker 1: 19:04

You know more more often I mean you got guys that did real drugs in prison and they were so known for getting money or you know whatever hustle that they had going on that they could go to the drug man and be like, hey, let me get $100. You know I'm good for it and it was just like here. They write your name in a ledger somewhere, you know, and that was that. But those are the most dangerous people to run credit with, because you know, when it comes to drugs, if you can't pay, it's pretty much over for you. The violence is off the Richter. You know shit can really hit the fan and it can hit the fan right in front of the CEOs. They don't care, and it has happened plenty of times. I've seen it happen plenty of times, unfortunately. Plenty of times. I've seen it happen plenty of times, unfortunately.

Speaker 1: 19:57

But you know there's all these alternate forms of currency, but cash does exist in prison. You know. I don't want people to think that it's like this thing that you don't see until you get out. You may not, depending on what social circles you run in out you may not, depending on what social circles you run in, but if you're in the mix especially in the drug game and the cell phones and the you know real high price stuff like you're going to see some cash hit your hand. And the first time I seen some cash hit my hand it blew my mind. I was probably three years in prison.

Speaker 1: 20:35

And this is when cash changed. This is when the big face you know hunters came out and they had the blue and the orange and all that shit on the paper Somebody gave you that. I was like what the fuck is that? I didn't even know what it was, and that just goes to show how things change on the outside while you're in prison. Because this dude handed me a $100 bill and I treated it as if it was worthless because I didn't know.

Speaker 1: 21:03

But you know I did business with that individual so much and he would just come and hand me cash, hand me cash, hand me cash, and I didn't know what to do with it. So I was rolling these $100 bills up and putting them in my art kit and, like pen tubes, you know, I was rolling them up and putting them on a string and lacing the string through my hoodie or through my pants or whatever you know, because I just, I just ain't know what to do with them. I really, I really trust you know nobody to like send it home to or how I can send it home. I know if they would monitor my mail. One day they cut a random envelope open and you know there's a thousand dollars, a hundred dollar bills in there. Well, I just lost a thousand dollars and I got to explain that they instantly gonna raise your security level. I don't care what security level you're at, like, if you're at a minimum, you about to be a high security level, right, instantly. Usually, when they raise your security level, you go up one step at a time. So you go from a minimum to a low, to a medium, to a close, which is monitor movement, uh, to a high, to a super max. Um, so like you get caught with cash, cell phones, anything like that, you might as well pack your shit because you ain't gonna be in the mix for too long. They gonna send you straight, like they will literally put you on a in a transport the next day. You know, ain't no waiting for a ride out, like you gone. So you know, cash is still king in prison and really it's only exchanged at the highest levels of transactions. So usually, like I said, drugs, cell phones, you know organized crime, you know stuff of that sort.

Speaker 1: 23:04

But when we talk about like, like, say, mid-level stuff, you know I went to the soups. Soups is standard currency. Food is, you know, pretty much the average man's goal. The more exotic the food or the harder it is to get, the more it's worth. And so in prison in Ohio you're allowed to order I think it's two food boxes a day from approved vendors and in these food boxes, you know, your family can go online and order them for you have it sent from the vendor to the prison and you get, man, if you're like me, you get all the stuff you can't get anywhere else.

Speaker 1: 23:50

So I remember telling stories to my mom when I would call her, you know, to my girlfriend at the time or whatever, and they'd be like oh, what you doing. I'd be like, oh, man, you know just cooked a meal. You know me and a homie cooked a meal. Oh, what y'all eating? Oh, roast beef. You know there's the episode we talked about food where me and Joe was making lasagna. We made spaghetti squash, you know, like we were really just doing the damn thing.

Speaker 1: 24:23

We were eating really good in there and it was because when people owed us money, especially people that didn't regularly have money, we would just say, oh, man, don't pay me in. You know random food items, soups and envelopes and coffee. I would say, man, order me a food box in your name. You know cause. You know your family's not going to send you food boxes. You're only allowed to get two a year. You're not going to use your two allotment. Go ahead and use one of them to order me a food box. So if you owe me a hundred dollars, I'm going to say, man, just order me a hundred dollar food box. Um, or send the money to my family and they'll order the food box in your name so they could max it out, cause there's a certain amount of weight that you can have on there and once you hit the maximum weight, then you're done.

Speaker 1: 25:16

So when you have roast beef, when you have all these exotic seasonings that you can't only get like you know I'm ordering pretty much in prison all you get is salt, pepper, italian seasoning and the soup packets from the ramen noodles. You know we were getting like vegetable flakes, mrs Dash, and all this other stuff. We getting roast beef, we getting chicken, shredded chicken, we getting, you know, chili, we getting all types of stuff. So that's when I was saying you come pay somebody with that, like they like, oh shit, like, if it costs you $3 and you going to do a regular transaction, that $3 might be double, it might be $6, you know. So, pretty much that's how it is. It's pretty much a barter system on steroids. You can pay with services too.

Speaker 1: 26:12

Everything is benign, as, like, I had a guy that ironed my clothes for me. I had a guy that did my laundry. Uh, eventually I had a guy that cleaned my cell. Um, you know, I, uh, I was the guy who, uh, at the beginning of my bit, I drew pictures for people. I wrote poems for people's girlfriends on Valentine's day you know I'm a handmade cards and, uh, you know, and all this different stuff. Man, I would draw portraits on handkerchiefs and everything. So that's pretty much how my hustle hand started and how I survived in prison Because, like I said, this is the have-nots. I started off with a nice little chunk of change on my books, but I didn't really know the value of the money I had. So I blew it quick and then I had to figure out how to survive.

Speaker 1: 27:01

And in prison, man, when the prison climate really gets bad like we did the episode about drugs in prison recently when the prison climate gets bad, when a prison climate gets bad, it's kind of like when the poor usurp the rich. There's people in there who live very comfortable if you can be comfortable in prison and it's because they're what we call prison rich. They're stable. They know they got money coming in. Maybe they run a store, maybe they got family that send them money, maybe they got money that they squirreled away from the outside. Whatever it is, they're in there with the plush you know, velour clothes, blankets and the matching towels on the floor that they use as area rugs. They're eating pretty much out of their box. They're never going to the child hall. There was a time where I didn't go to the child hall for four years. When you got it it ain't even worth the trip.

Speaker 1: 28:04

I had a guy I paid to cook for me. It's really like a balance in your checkbook thing out here. You know it's like okay, how much money I got. Okay, how much can I put out. I got to pay this dude 50 cents to iron my clothes. I got to pay this guy $2 to clean my sale. I got to pay this guy $5 a month to do my laundry.

Speaker 1: 28:27

You know so, you know you balance that checkbook. You got stuff coming in, you got stuff coming out and, to be honest, man, it was pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing because if you can step out of the current moment you know thinking about it first person, you know I was in prison. I'm thinking about it first person I was able to step out of the moment and see the bigger picture, like, damn, this prison economy is booming. You know, like, if any of you guys follow politics or you know the government, gdp and stuff like that like one prison, one block, what's cellblock in a prison has a GDP. And if it was to be, if some nerd was to do a story and calculate the GDP of one block, I mean really in one cell block, you could have, I don't know, 50, depending on the size I mean.

Speaker 1: 29:30

So let's say, when I was in Toledo there were, I think there were, 90 people to a pod and then there were three pods on each floor. So six pods per block, I would say each one of those pods alone was probably doing 50 grand in illicit currency exchanges every, I would say, month, every month, $50,000, $60,000, change your hands. You know you got like I said. You got guys shooting tattoos. You got guys selling hooch. You got guys selling tobacco. You got guys selling hooch. You got guys selling tobacco. You got guys selling weed, selling meth, selling heroin. You got guys, you know, making pictures and cards. You know there's guys that build sculptures we talked about mush faking in one of our previous episodes and they're selling those damn sculptures for $150 sometimes, man, and they're selling those damn sculptures for $150 sometimes, man. It's insane and real money. They'll sell it to the staff. You know you got guys making candy, guys making food, empanadas and you know whatever.

Speaker 1: 30:41

Like it's really a booming, thriving economy and all this currency is transactions of some sort. Currency some sort or another is exchanging hands. So from the outsider people that never been to prison, like it's hard to imagine like somebody has the potential to be living kind of good in there really. I mean cause, and it's kind of easy, easier to understand how some people come back to the outside world and they can't seem to adjust and it's because the rules have changed. You know, like now I have to go get a job and I have to make a set amount of money per hour and I have to pay taxes and I have this. It's so much oversight that it's like you know, in prison, no matter how good or benign your hustle hustle is, it's contraband, it's illicit. You're not allowed to exchange property or money of any sort inside a prison. It it's in the rule book. So anything you do is breaking the rules.

Speaker 1: 31:56

So when you come home, it's like it's pretty much especially if you've ever sold drugs, it's pretty much probably one of the main contributors to somebody going back to what they used to do, especially if they start hitting roadblocks. You know, if you come home and you're trying to do it right and you're trying to get a job and you're getting the door slammed in your face every time, it's probably a good chance that you're going to be like man, let me figure out some hustle Same stuff you did in prison me. Figure out some hustle same stuff you did in prison, but out here the dollar's not as strong, you know, it's not as strong. The dollar's 10 times as strong in prison. So when you come out here. There is no, you know. Oh, you know I'm going to draw pictures. And yeah, you could. You could start a business and do that. That's slow, it's going to take forever In prison.

Speaker 1: 32:50

You start drawing pictures, you pretty much roll in. The next day you at the height of your business within a week. You know, out here, like I said, it's more oversight Now. You got to advertise it's a macro environment, a macroeconomic situation instead of a microeconomic situation. So you're going to go for the most profitable hustle you can find, which is usually drugs. You know, don't get me wrong.

Speaker 1: 33:18

There's plenty of stories that you see around town people cooking out of their kitchen selling plates Best food ever, you know. And eventually you know, shout out to my dude Chef Hero Started off cooking plates, got him a food truck, you know. And eventually, you know, shout out to my dude Chef, hero Started off cooking plates, got him a food truck, you know, got him a storefront. Next thing, you know, multiple storefronts. Next thing, you know, he in real estate, he boxing, he doing all this stuff. That is a perfect story of somebody who took that hustle mentality and just took it to the max from. You know, step by step, just took it to the max from, you know, step by step.

Speaker 1: 33:54

But coming home from prison, you know, really, you don't really have that patience. You don't have the luxury of patience. You got your PO on your ass saying you got to get a job. But even if you do get a job, I mean, a lot of times there ain't enough to pay the bills. But you got to pay your PO too, and if you don't pay your PO they can send you back to prison. So now you're looking for that way, that hustle, so you can pay the prison bailiff to keep off the ass or whatever you know.

Speaker 1: 34:21

So anyway, I've rambled enough. I've given you guys, I feel like, a good picture of what currency is in a prison and if you guys got any questions, any further questions of what currency is in prison, please let me know. You know what the socials are Facebook, instagram we do have Twitter, tiktok, you know wherever you want and email stories at lockdownthelegacycom. Hit me up, send me your questions. Even if it's not about currency, whatever it is, I would love to discuss the topic on one of our episodes, all right, so for now, I'm about to leave y'all with that nice little uh-huh to think about. Right, I just put something on your mind. Take it and run Peace.