Instant ramen is delicious, easy to cook, ludicrously cheap and surprisingly nonperishable.

For all those reasons and more, the noodles are overtaking tobacco as the preferred underground currency that inmates use in prisons, according to a new study by Michael Gibson-Light, 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 in a news release Monday. "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 unidentified state-run facility as part of a larger investigation into how prisoners were responding to declining prison services. He labeled 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 were 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."

"It's gold. It's literally gold," Alvarez told The Washington Post. "People will actually - and I hate to say this but - they'll kill for it, believe it or not."

And like any currency, the value of a ramen pack fluctuated.

"I remember in '92, you could get them for 20 cents a ramen," Alvarez said. "In 2013, the last time I was in prison, they were equivalent to $1 a ramen, sometimes $2."

To read the complete article, see:
'They'll kill for it': Ramen has become the black-market currency in American prisons (/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/23/soup-is-money-in-here-ramen-has-become-the-black-market-currency-in-american-prisons/)

John Mutch writes:

To read the complete article, see:
Ramen noodles 'are most valuable US prison commodity', study suggests (www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37162373)

John adds:

To read the complete article, see:
From ramen to sleeping space, the currencies of prisons around the globe (www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-24/ramen-sleeping-space-currencies-prisons-around-globe)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
BOOK REVIEW: CURIOUS CURRENCY (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n34a11.html)