Book of the Week: Prison Ramen

23 Aug 2016

This week I read Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories Behind Bars, because if I was going to do any recruiting, I would need to know about the most valuable commodity in the prison economy. The ramen recipes provide a backdrop to the prison stories. Prison kind of sucks, but I guess that is the point of it. If you’re not a white male drug taking athlete from Stanford, you could possible end up in jail. There are some stories from celebrities like Danny Trejo and Shia LaBeouf, who talks about his time stealing Pokemon from Kmart. I learned that sugar-filled coffee can help with heroin withdrawal. Although I’d stay away from heroin since there is not much difference between a therapeutic dose and lethal dose. If you want some booze in prison, there’s a pruno recipe too. Racism

Sometimes, there was even fighting within the races, but it was still about race. For example, you’d have Mexican immigrants fighting in big riots against the Mexican American homeboys.

Prisons are usually broken down along racial and gang affiliations. If you want to survive in prison, you need to be affiliated with a group or just be crazy enough that no one will mess with you. Mail-Out

An inmate’s associate could send him a cashier’s check or money order from drug sales or some other illegal act and in turn the inmate could send money elsewhere in the form of a clean federal check.

You used to be able to use the prison system to launder money. When you are heavily constrained, you need to be creative to survive and compensate.