Last November, about a month before I began this article, Keefe Commissary raised prices three percent (on all items). This was on the heels of another hike less than a year ago, and one of a dozen or so since taking over commissary for the Division of Correction around 2013. Many here believe this last hike was brought about with the Longshoreman’s’ Strike to be used as a spurious pretext. And I’m sure just as many of us knew – with estimated billions in loses a day – it wasn’t going to last long. It wasn’t even long enough for them to put out this reasoning. And it worked in their favor, having never offered a rational. Still, on the inside we knew, because of the arbitrary manner in which goods are sold to prisoners, it provided an opportunity that would not be missed.
Before the eye rolling starts: this isn’t a prison advocacy writing. And if you’re the man who rolls his eyes, or the person who believes those in prison deserve everything they get – having every right to those stances – this article should challenge your beliefs. If you are honest. Because it goes a little deeper to explore possible conflicts of interest, details a pernicious societal cycle, and its focus is on following the money, which, we know, aside from acts of god, changes everything.
Know that these hikes have a profound impact. Not only around the prison system, but also in the pockets of law-abiding citizens who care for their loved ones in prison. The prisoner’s labor could never meet the financial demands, for the majority of prisoners are worked to earn between eighty-five cents and a dollar twenty a day. By majority, I mean numbers that exceed ninety percent. The only jobs paying above the base are those in the shops, which in Maryland’s prisons, never exceed more than a couple hundred. If that. And this eighty-five-cents base pay is the same as it was when I entered the Division of Correction in 1987.
Whatever one earns, the cost of goods remains excessive. The dollar doesn’t go far, and it is well below the powers it had before Keefe took over commissary. Prior to the takeover, there was rarely a need to spend the maximum allowed sixty-five dollars a week. Since Keefe’s takeover, the maximum has gone up twice – first to eighty-five dollars, then to one hundred. And that is excluding stamps and or the purchase of phone time. During the time it was sixty-five dollars, the items purchased could last into the next month. Some of us – those with no help from the outside – actually lived from State Pay to State Pay. Which was less than thirty dollars. (The reader should understand I write with an accounting of inflation.). Now, one is lucky if a one-hundred-dollar bag of commissary lasts into the next week. This is a literal statement. It is nothing for a person to spend three or four-hundred dollars a month on commissary. Most of which will be spend on food. And if you consider that we are given three “meals” a day, this should clearly illustrate the unfair and deceptive pricing of the items we have to purchase. If any one person on the outside can imagine spending four-hundred dollars a month on groceries AFTER being provided three – even partially eaten – meals a day then, you should have an even clearer picture of the injustice. You should also acknowledge that we aren’t purchasing prime cuts of fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables. But we’re purchasing highly processed scraps of small fish, sausage, and noodles primarily.
For the purpose of this article, after some observation, I spoke to “Christopher”. Chris is in his early twenties. Physically he is a very big guy, at three- hundred and eighteen pounds and a little over six feet. Yes, this picture probably conjures visions of obesity and ideas that Chris should maybe push away from the table. Though he is massive, he works out and isn’t the sloppy vision his numbers suggest. He is naturally big though and is always either eating or searching for food. He told me that he and his mom had had a falling out. After his mom had complained about the amount of money she had been sending and asked what he was really spending it on.
Chris is less than two years into his sentence, and his family hasn’t gotten used to the idea of him being in prison. Myself, on the other hand, having been here long before he was born, my family isn’t as enthusiastic, or in the number they were in the beginning. But the point is – because I don’t eat as much as Chris – I can still burn through just as much money, having to eat Keefe’s brand of healthier options. This is due to having hypertension, and between May and July, I burned through nine-hundred dollars – spent primarily on food.
This brings me to another point. Not only are the prices outrageous, most of the brands aren’t premium or name brand items. Also, they are more unhealthy than the named brand goods whose prices they exceed. For example. A local brand of chips – Utz – has only eighty milligrams of sodium in its three-ounce bag, versus Keefe’s Moon Lodge brand of the same size plain potato chip, which has two hundred. Another flavor in its line of chips – Flamin’ Cheetos – has over four-hundred milligrams of sodium, and the Chilli flavored chips exceeds that. Those items would be considered junk food. But it is all the same, pretty much across the board. Its Fresh Catch tuna has five-hundred milligrams of sodium. Compare this with a three or four ounce can of Starkist or Bumble Bee – the brands purchased previously – and see for yourself.
Before Keefe, local businesses could benefit from the prison economy while providing quality goods. This dynamic lent itself to fair and affordable pricing. Now, with Keefe as the sole distributor, all our goods are from, or come through Plano, Texas or Missouri. And as a result of the monopoly, it puts real strain – sometimes with fatal effects – on quality goods that would otherwise be sold in bulk. An example of this coincides with an article I read about Clorox filing for bankruptcy. I thought, how can this be? When nearly two million people are purchasing a detergent brand called Heritage every week.
I thought about reaching out to the CEO of Clorox, to see if we had mutual concerns with monopoly and inferior products. But, because of the way prisoners are looked down on, I decided it was probably a waste of time.
Keefe is bad on so many levels – items come damaged; we’re rushed through collection – it’s impossible to narrow it down to a main claim. Beside the inferior brands, and if I were pressed to, I would have to name the possible conflicts of interest as one of its most foul and egregious offenses with regard to ownership.
At the inception of the takeover, there was talk here amongst the prisoners that Keefe’s owners included former president George W. Bush and or his wife’s family. (I wasn’t able to verify. Prisoner’s ability to search is highly limited.). But I’m sure those who look for fair play in our civilized society, would find former law makers, or officers of the law and courts, having investment in Keefe reeking with the stench of a conflict. Especially since the goods are distributed tied to usurious prices.
If one also considers that it was with the advent of the Bush Administration that prisoners’ rights were severely limited with regard to the ability to challenge civil actions in court. Things that had been put in place after the Attica Riots in New York and the Soledad Brothers in California to put the country on notice concerning the inhumanity that happened inside prisons. These measures were meant to combat unfair actions against prisoners and provided a means to address the courts absent cumbersome roadblocks. Books like Christian Parente’s “Lock Down America” foretold exactly how Bush would implement the curbing of prisoner’s right to challenge; by using a few universally – meaning even among prisoners of sound mind – frowned upon cases to scuttle the whole system with judges ready to tag the most credible arguments “frivolous”.
Wouldn’t it be something if those connected to the administration that curbed prisoner’s rights were now selling them goods? Or, if they benefited from it in the past?
Of course, there is a long line of documented efforts of concerted abuse trained on prisoners, one of the most recent examples is in Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow”. Normally the focus is on disproportionate arrests and convictions, as well as exploitation of labor. Though not unique, or the first of its kind, this article has sought to amplify the financial bloodsucking. Here in Maryland, during the aughts, legislation was proposed concerning the ceasing of the poorest people paying the highest phone bills. I guess the fees subsided – after decades of bloodsucking – with the catalogue of new phone companies and the assortment of new plans. Something similar should be done with the purchase of goods. Where there are additional vendors.
My limited ability to search yielded a list of vice presidents. This begs the question, why wouldn’t a person(s) want to put their names – if not faces – on their businesses?
Laissez-faire and our beloved Capitalism allow us to bet on people being sent to prison. But those issuing sentences and crafting laws have been in office of such, or in closest proximity should absolutely be excluded from earning and investing this way. At the very least, they shouldn’t be able to conceal doing so.
In January, Congressman Chip Roy, of Texas, along with the Freedom Caucus, expressed similar ideas about lawmakers investing in stocks. Maybe he can look into Keefe’s business practice, ownership, the monopoly over the DOC, and the possible conflict.
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