How expensive are basic necessities in prison?

In addition to receiving basic necessities such as soap, toilet paper, a toothbrush and toothpaste as well as clothes and three meals a day, In the United States, prisoners are largely required to pay for additional food, worship and hygiene items themselves.

And, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, while inflation has driven up prices across the board, prison stations often add a premium that goes well beyond the usual price increases.

For example, a package of Maruchan instant noodles currently costs $0.20 at Walmart, while state prison cafeterias across the country charge up to $0.65 for the same serving, according to data aggregated by The Appeal reporters Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg and Ethan Corey for the first-ever database of cafeteria prices in the United States.

This bonus is difficult for many inmates to bear because the average salary of prison employees is capped at $0.52 per hour. as evidenced by a 2022 ACLU report.

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Statista calculations show Prison workers with regular jobs, which include maintenance or kitchen work, must work an average of 1.6 hours to afford a packet of the most commonly offered ramen variety statewide. For a cup of macaroni and cheese, inmates must work more than half a day on average. When it comes to personal hygiene, many items considered basic necessities for maintaining personal health are even less affordable for inmates. A tube of toothpaste or a stick of deodorant, for example, take about a day and a half to earn based on the average hourly wage.

When looking at state-level averages, many items become even less affordable for ordinary inmates. For example, the average hourly wage for a prisoner in Louisiana is $0.06, while a bag of ramen costs $0.57. While states like Texas, which don’t pay their prison employees at all, argue that inmate labor helps pay for their housing and food, companies outside of prisons also profit from the country’s cheapest labor force. An in-depth Associated Press investigation into forced prison labor found “hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural products tied to goods sold on the open market,” with companies like McDonald’s and Walmart profiting from the arrangement.