Why ramen noodles are currency in US prisons

Instant ramen is delicious, easy to cook, ludicrously cheap and surprisingly non-perishable.

For all those reasons and more, the noodles are taking over from tobacco as the preferred underground currency inmates use in prisons, according to a new study by Michael GibsonLight, a doctoral candidate in the University of Arizona School of Sociology.

“Prisoners are so unhappy with the quality and quantity of prison food that they receive that they have begun relying on ramen noodles — a cheap, durable food product — as a form of money in the underground economy,” Gibson-Light said. “Because it is cheap, tasty and rich in calories, ramen has become so valuable that it is used to exchange for other goods.”

Over a year, Gibson-Light interviewed 60 male inmates and staff members in an unnamed state-run facility as part of a larger investigation into how prisoners were responding to declining prison services. He labelled what he found “punitive frugality” — that is, as corrections budgets shrink, the cost of care is shifting onto prisoners and their support networks. Enter the humble ramen brick. Inmates often used instant ramen packs to barter for other food items, clothes, hygiene products and even services, Gibson-Light observed. At times, he said, he saw prisoners put down ramen packs, or “soups,” as literal bargaining chips during card games. According to the study, one inmate put it succinctly: “Soup is money in here”.

Gibson-Light said he noted that the move away from a “luxury” currency such as cigarettes occurred even though the prison had not banned smoking or tobacco products. Rather, he wrote that inmates told him they were receiving food deemed “inedible or too little to sustain them for a day”.

He noted that the inmates at the prison in question used to receive three hot meals a day, but in the early 2000s, the second meal was changed to a cold sandwich and a small bag of chips.

Weekend lunches had been eliminated; overall, portion sizes for every meal were reduced, he said.

“It's 'cause people are hungry. You can tell how good a man's doing [financially] by how many soups he's got in his locker. ‘Twenty soups? Oh, that guy's doing good'!” one inmate told Gibson-Light, according to the study.

“People will pay more for an envelope when they need to write home to get more soups! Prison is like the streets. You use currency for everything. In here, it's soups.”