Commissary Strategies and Prison Ingenuity: My Tablet and Beyond

Two unique aspects of prison life are money/spending management and ingenuity. I want to share how both are impacting me right now. Commissary is a big part of life here at camp. With a $180 spending limit and two weeks between shopping days, I have to strategize about what I want and need. I also have to be ready to adapt when items are out of stock, which happens frequently. Some things I’m still trying to acquire for better workouts are running shoes ($90), t-shirts, boxers, socks, a watch ($80), and protein supplements. I try to get a few items off that list each time, but I also need to leave room for snacks and hygiene products. Yesterday, despite the sparse commissary selection, I managed to get the biggest item on my list: a tablet ($130) and headphones ($20). I mainly wanted these for the MP3 player. Ever since the weather warmed up and the track opened, I’ve been working on my half-marathon goal. I’ve never run without music before, and it’s been slow and boring. A good playlist can set the pace for a great run.

You might be wondering, what’s a prison tablet like? First, the casing is clear, so all the electronics and batteries are visible. This looks kind of cool, but the purpose is to prevent inmates from hiding contraband. There’s no internet capability; I don’t think they even have Wi-Fi chips. So, what’s the point? Well, you can connect them to the computers in the computer lab, where I’m writing this entry. From there, we can sync/download MP3s, generic games, and rent movies. They don’t make it easy or cheap, though. Songs are around $1.50 each, and for some reason, you can only purchase 15 songs a day. This means it will take a few days to get my collection on the tablet. Games are about $7.00 and are mostly copies of popular games. There are no microtransactions, which is nice. It’s like the old days of phone games—you buy it once and play forever. I was looking forward to the chess game I saw everyone playing, but they removed it from the prison app store.

Movie rentals are about $5.00 per movie, and they’re all a few years old. About three movies are replaced each month. They’re usually good movies, but they have a watch-time limit. You can only watch a movie for about 30 minutes past its runtime, giving us just enough time to rewind a few times if we miss dialogue, but not enough to rewatch the whole movie. They do this to prevent inmates from sharing rentals. These movie rentals are their cash cows, and they don’t want to lose money.

Other useful features include an FM radio (necessary for listening to prison TVs) and a calculator, which is handy for commissary planning. The tablet is bulky with rubber corners for protection, but it’s not easy to carry, especially while running.

That brings me to the second theme of this post: prisoner ingenuity. It amazes me. Before coming here, I started wearing an eye mask to bed to help me sleep, and I highly recommend it. When I got to my bunk and had to put my sheets on the four-inch piece of foam they call a mattress, I found a delightful surprise: an eye mask. The previous occupant must have left it as a gift. After using it for a few nights, I realized it was quite nice, and I wanted to check its value. I couldn’t find “eye mask” on the commissary form. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was handmade. They cut two eye mask patterns from sweatshirt material, stuffed it with toilet paper, and sewed it together. They used elastic from gym shorts for the headband. Quite impressive. I see creative solutions like this every day. There’s no way to warm food from the commissary except a hot water dispenser (190 degrees), which is good for ramen, pasta, and coffee. But they sell tortilla shells, cheese, and sliced meats. So, if you want a burrito, we use the iron to fry it. It works really well. My favorite is how they make pizzas. They combine soft tortilla shells for a crust using water and honey. Marinara sauce isn’t available, but we can get mozzarella and pepperoni. To shred the cheese, we use the metal top of a cleaned Ajax container. Baking is the hardest part. We place the uncooked pizza in a garbage bag with some air to create a buffer on top, and use another bag of 190-degree water below and above it, creating a 190-degree oven. It takes a while, but it works really well.

Back to my situation, I need to find a way to carry my bulky tablet while running. Looking around, I see people with homemade backpacks just for tablets. After asking around, I found these ingenious contraptions are made by inmates in the quilting classes (along with the eye masks). They use sweatshirt material to make a pouch perfectly sized for the tablet and attach extra belts to create an X-type backpack. I’m currently trying to convince someone in the class to make me one or get me into the class myself. It’s a lot of work to listen to music while running. The quilting classes are pretty cool anyway; you learn to sew quilts for children in hospitals.

They used to sell small MP3 players, but they got rid of them, probably to get inmates to buy the more expensive tablets and get them hooked on movie rentals.

So, that’s this week’s inside scoop on my prison life. I hope all my readers, friends, and family are doing well. I miss you all.