There are too many examples of prison wringing wealth from its prisoners and their families. Inflated pricing on commissary goods and minor service charges for phone calls? More like plundering by a thousand cuts. Recently, my aunt sent me $50 via CorrectPay, but had to pay a service charge of $5.95. (The fee increases to $7.95 if you send more than $100.)
If you’re like me, weary of withering your family’s resources by constantly asking them to help out, then you may wonder: How can I do better for myself?
No prison system is going to start paying its laborers a fair wage any time soon. That means we need to take control of our stories and make sure our futures are progressing financially. Where does your entrepreneurial success story begin?
We should start by recognizing what we’re dealing with. Prison Policy Initiative reports that between 2017 and 2025, incarcerated people and their families have paid an average of $5.6 billion — with a “b” — a year to vendors and telecommunication companies for commissary goods, tablets and phone calls. Thousands of companies profit off mass incarceration in one way or another. That’s to say nothing of the obligation charges and restitution fees and all the other costs that the state levies on systems-impacted people.
Meanwhile, living in prison isn’t cheap. Hygiene for the month, underwear, sweats for winter, extra food from commissary — all of that costs money. Just this month, I paid roughly $20 for three items: Folger’s coffee ($14.50), bodywash ($3.13) and toothpaste ($2.38). And that was before an early August memo from the New Mexico Corrections Department informed us that price hikes were coming due to “economic forces.”
I grow tired of seeing guys with their trades come to prison and achieve zero financial autonomy. Guys who have been led to believe they cannot be successful or pursue prosperity while serving their sentences.
I think of men like Irvin Ramirez, who has been incarcerated in New Mexico since he was a teenager. He never imagined being able to make money on his own merits.
“It was unthinkable,” he said. “Everybody just always assumed we were suspended in animation and barred from the outside economy.”
But then he read “The Millionaire Prisoner” by Mike Enemigo, whose book compiles tips for becoming economically successful in prison.
Ramirez became determined, started cranking out his art and networking via a prison-to-outside population pipeline. He used his gift of drawing to make greeting cards and paños to sell, earning a small wage. He also began donating proceeds of his cards to charities and children’s hospitals.
“It was an unproven [method],” Ramirez said, referring to drawing as a way to earn income.
There’s a paradigm shift that happens when you start to be the proprietor of your own skills. You start to think: “I have worth. I can be of value.” It sustains that human need in all of us to be useful.
For me, I had to take stock of my qualities to find my writing passion. Honing that creativity, I assessed my time and started reading books on craft.
When I received my first stipend from Prison Journalism Project, for an essay I wrote about the lack of education opportunities for lifers, my confidence and self-esteem skyrocketed. It wasn’t just a $50 platitude, but a burden taken off my family. Now able to estimate my value, I started projecting confidence in my everyday interactions. I felt dignified through my work. I was proud of myself for breaking the norms of my surroundings — with something of value that came from within me.
Others in prisons can feel that value too.
My advice to them: Be proud of yourselves while seeking success through your passions — no matter how long it takes to get your first win. Don’t let this system stifle or straightjacket your potential. Search inside yourselves during your sentence. You could be a storyteller. A diorama builder. A tattoo artist. A jailhouse lawyer. Even a cook or a cleaner!
This isn’t a cure-all. This is a time-consuming path of rejection, failure and flops. It’s hard to saddle this concrete horse, so you gotta love what you do. It took me years to finally get in a position where my writing provided a return on my writing investment.
Prison has chained our ability to succeed while separated from society. That diminishes our self-worth. But it’s time to start relinquishing the myths that prison has ingrained into us. This is your time, so take your power back.
I don’t see degenerates when I look at you. I see a luminous thread weaving ingenuity into a tapestry of possibility. The time to create a new standard of self-sufficiency is now. We must invest in ourselves and build up financial equity with the skills and passions we already have or will create. The age of prison entrepreneurship is upon us.
