Inside the Fragile Balance of the Prison Economy

Devin Giordano explains how the prison economy operates on scarcity and survival, where even efforts to eliminate drugs may trigger dangerous unintended consequences.

I watch with uneasy eyes as the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, known as DOCCS, continues to layer precaution after precaution in its war against contraband. Scanners are installed, mail is delayed, packages are sifted through by dogs, and every corner of the facility feels under surveillance. On paper, these steps are about safety: keeping drugs out and keeping people alive. But from where I sit inside Eastern New York Correctional Facility, I can’t help but ask myself: What would really happen if they succeed? If one day the flood of K2, marijuana, Suboxone strips, and hooch is finally cut off, and the drug trade collapses? It sounds like the safer outcome. In theory, it should be. But in here, theory rarely matches reality.

How the Prison Economy Really Works

Prison, like the free world, runs on an economy. Only here, the economy doesn’t revolve around paychecks and credit cards. It’s built on scarcity, deprivation, and ingenuity. Commissary food—ramen, tuna, coffee—becomes currency. A haircut, a tattoo, or a handmade greeting card is a service industry. A loan of snacks is a micro-finance system, with interest rates that would make Wall Street blush. And the fuel that keeps it all moving, the backbone of the underground prison economy in New York’s prisons, is drugs. They’re both commodity and currency, the things most consistently in demand and most reliably profitable.

I don’t condone drugs, nor do I celebrate their grip on this place. I’ve watched men overdose, thrash on the floor, foam at the mouth, and come terrifyingly close to death. I’ve seen friendships collapse over unpaid debts and violence erupt in hallways when someone tried to shortcut a deal. Drugs have taken a toll on everyone here, whether they use or not. But what scares me most is not their presence—it’s their absence. Because I know that if DOCCS ever manages to truly choke off the flow of contraband, it won’t feel like a triumph. It will feel like a vacuum, and vacuums inside prison walls are dangerous.

Survival Wages and Rising Costs in the Prison Economy

The official wages we earn here are so low they don’t even register as survival. In New York, non-industry jobs pay between 10 and 33 cents an hour. A man can work six hours a day, five days a week, and still walk away with less than $15 every two weeks. If he’s lucky enough to get an industry job through Corcraft—the state-run manufacturing arm—he might make up to $1.30 an hour. But those jobs are rare, and most of us are stuck making pennies while commissary prices climb. Peanut butter that once cost $1.40 now sells for $2.40. A bag of coffee that was $4 can suddenly be $8 or more. Inflation, package bans, and the shift to overpriced “approved vendors” have made it harder and harder for families to support their loved ones.

In this climate, drugs fill the gap—not just as a coping mechanism, but as an economic necessity. They move money in ways wages never could. For some men, the trade is the only way to send money home to a struggling mother or to put commissary on their kids’ tables during visits. For others, it’s the only way to afford deodorant, stamps, or food. When you make survival itself a hustle, you force people into shadow economies. And so long as the State keeps wages low and living costs high, the prison economy thrives on what’s most profitable—contraband.

What Fills the Void?

But here’s the part that frightens me: If that profit disappears overnight, what fills its place? You don’t erase demand just by erasing supply. The need remains. The hunger remains. The desperation remains. And when there’s no longer a profitable trade to meet it, the energy of that desperation has to go somewhere else. I fear it will go into violence. Extortion will spike. Men who once survived by flipping drugs will have to rob, bully, or manipulate to fill the hole. Gangs that once organized around controlling drug routes will turn on each other over smaller hustles.

Already, technology has shifted the way prison debts work. It used to be you paid in commissary items or maybe sent a money order through a relative. Now Cash App, Apple Pay, and Zelle have made it easy to move money directly from families on the outside. I’ve seen men pressured to call home and demand hundreds of dollars to settle debts. The prison economy now extends into neighborhoods already struggling to survive. When the largest trade—drugs—is gone, that pressure won’t fade. It will only grow stronger.

And what about the men who actually use? Addiction doesn’t vanish with prohibition—it mutates. Men will turn to hooch brewed in toilets, to stolen medications, to anything that takes the edge off. Withdrawal will play out in locked cells, with no medical support, no therapy, no safety net. Mental illness, already rampant and untreated, will deepen. The silence that fills these blocks when programming is cut will only become heavier.

The Fragile Balance of the Prison Economy

I’m not blind to the harm that drugs cause. But I’ve also seen how the trade keeps a fragile balance. If that balance is destroyed without higher wages, affordable commissary, or real therapy and programming, the consequences will be catastrophic. Drugs are the keystone in a bridge that was never built strong enough to begin with. Take out that keystone and the bridge doesn’t stand tall—it collapses.

So I ask again, what would really happen if DOCCS succeeds in shutting it all down? I don’t have a clear answer. Maybe that’s because I’ve lived too long in a system that doesn’t trade in solutions, only punishment. But I know this: If drugs disappear tomorrow, the problems won’t disappear with them. They’ll multiply, twist, and spread, like cracks in a foundation no one has repaired. When the scanners finally catch it all, when the last strip of K2 is gone, the silence that follows won’t feel like safety. It will feel like standing in the middle of a vacuum.

Interested in reading more? Check out The Underground Prison Economy

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