In jail, where inmates aren’t allowed to handle cold, hard cash, most people imagine the same stereotypical prison currency: cigarettes.
But, according to Carl Cattermole — the author of Prison: A Survival Guide — tinned fish and ramen are the most common currency in jails.
A few things make cigarettes, fish, and ramen good currencies: They’re nonperishable, come in standard units, trade easily, and have intrinsic value.
In some prisons, inmates can buy a sweatshirt (worth $10.81 in the prison commissary) for 2 “soups” — or 5 hand-rolled cigarettes for 1 soup.
But why did ramen and tinned fish replace cigarettes at the top?
After US federal jails banned smoking in 2004, cigarettes became a less reliable currency than ramen or tinned fish. But, more importantly, cost cuts have made high-calorie ramen extremely valuable to hungry inmates.
An inmate told the author of a 2016 study, “’You can tell how good a man’s doing [financially] by how many soups he’s got in his locker. ‘Twenty soups? Oh, that guy’s doing good!’”
But the ramen economy is surprisingly complex: Inmates can rack up debt with people who hold large ramen reserves, earn higher credit limits, and even refinance soup debts with different ramen reserve-holders.