Here’s another insight into the hidden life of a prison. There are currencies in prison, though they’re not pennies and pounds.
Black Tuesday & The Great Mackerel Crash
Our ancestors established that having a currency is essential to trade. While a farmer might want to buy a new tool, he might not want to trade a portion of his cow for it – how can you trade a piece of cow without killing the animal? Prison is no different. Prisoners trade everything from clothing, trainers, CD’s, stereos, Games consoles and that is without even touching on the illicit trade in drugs and mobile phones.
Now before May of 2016 debt management was simple – the currency was ‘Burn’[1]. Debts were measured in ounces of burn, based around the 1/2 ounce (12.5g) and 1 ounce (25g) packets on ‘the canteen’. For smaller purchases the 1/2 ounce could be further split into 1/4 ounce and 1/8 ounce with the latter being roughly £1 in value. You could imagine the canteen is like an ATM used to access funds.
The canteen sheet is distributed weekly to every prisoner in the country. It is a list of basic items that we can purchase with the money we earn, or if we’re lucky, with the money we get sent in from the outside.
I guess you could describe it as a paper based ordering system where we order everyday things such as toiletries, beverages and groceries. We fill in our purchases and on a subsequent day our purchases will arrive vacuum packed at our cell doors. Here in Erlestoke our canteen sheets are handed out on Tuesday and our shopping is delivered on Friday.
This calendar has spawned the phrases ‘Kick & Collect Tuesday’ and ‘Black-Eye Friday’. Kick & Collect Tuesday because wing enforcers and bullies check sheets to make sure that their ‘customers’ are ordering the agreed items to pay off their debt, while ‘Black-Eye’ Friday involves encouraging customers to actually hand over said items.
But the entire economic balance of the contraband market was thrown into chaos when the Prison Service introduced a smoking ban in May of 2016. All of a sudden burn ceased to be a currency and instead became a prized commodity. At the start of May 2016 an ounce of Burn cost around £9 which included a free pack of Rizzla papers. By the end of June 2016, Burn was retailing at £100 per ounce and the previously free Rizzla were costing £8 per packet.
In the beginning, desperate smokers were trading their electrical goods for burn, but suddenly the trade had generated a plethora of vendors wanting to sell games consoles – the laws of supply and demand still apply in prison – suddenly the X-Box and PlayStation commodity sector favoured buyers and the value of consoles plummeted.
Suffice to say that the bulk of prison trade was arbitrary. Imagine a chaotic world of conversion rates with buyers demanding US Dollars and Vendors offering Bitcoin. While it did little to smooth prison trade it did provide excellent arbitrage opportunities for the plugged in and astute traders who could insert themselves into buying chains and extract a commission. But where there are agents & brokers extracting their percentages, there are buyers and vendors begrudging such fees. These agents needed to be cut out of the equation – a mutually respected and stable currency needed to be found.
I had thought that coffee might become the new currency. There were two varieties on our canteen, the 70g Lyons (fondly called dog-shite sweepings) packet at £1.09 and the 150g Nescafe at £3.99. Both products were small enough to be stored and had a nigh on infinite shelf life. Somebody else suggested that sugar might be the currency – but sugar can lead to a nicking as it can be used to manufacture Hooch.
I’m not sure how it happened, but by around August of 2016 tinned Mackerel had become that currency. At £1.59 each the tins were small and stackable and they boasted a long expiry date. Another key factor was liquidity, they could be cashed in readily – in large quantities. Anybody holding a cache of Mackerel could always rely on weight trainers who wanted to bulk up – they craved the protein rich fish.
All went well for over a year until Mackerel suddenly jumped from £1.59 to £1.75 per tin – there was a brief adjustment period, but ultimately Mackerel held its position as the currency of choice. I knew of prisoners that had done extremely well out of the sudden surge in their stock holding – it was not unusual for the main dealers in the prison to hold in excess of 500 tins. A portfolio that size jumped by £80 overnight (about 10 weeks full-time work for a prisoner). Caveat Emptor! They should have been warned.
After a six month peak the price of Mackerel fell to its regular £1.59 slot and there it remained for a year or so until Black Tuesday – 18th June 2019. Like city traders leaping from the shard, arses fell out all over the prison when the canteen sheets were handed out. Mackerel had hit an all-time low of £1.39 per tin. There had been no forecasts, no profit warnings – no indicators. Markets were in chaos, previously agreed deals were suddenly being renegotiated, vendors were reneging on sales having lost faith in the currency – there were complex trades that involved staged payments – would refunds reflect the price of Mackerel at the point of transfer or at the current market price. What might happen next? Might the tinned Tuna and Pilchard markets also become infected?
Oh how I laughed! Although I am slightly tempted to invest in Mackerel – a good time to buy-in methinks.
The Jailhouse Moose:
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[1] Burn – prison slang for Tobacco.
