The Wages of Inequality—Behind Bars

A version of this story ran in the July / August 2024 issue.

Editor’s Note: Harris, the author of this essay, is incarcerated at the Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville. The following piece is drawn from her memory of events in approximately 2010 at another unit. Before being released into the general prison population this May, she spent over eight years in solitary confinement.

One hundred and five nude women stand in alphabetical order, forming a huge oval. We silently scan each other’s bodies, looking for flaws.

To my right is Lindsay, a 40-something redhead with splotches of psoriasis on her limbs. She whispers that it’s not contagious. She says this every time we’re naked. We’ve just completed our 10-hour work shift at the print shop in a Texas women’s prison. The guard stripping us announces that the tool room is missing a screwdriver.

Normally, kitchen tools like ladles go missing. They’re usually discovered after being discarded accidentally in the trash, misplaced, or miscounted. But a screwdriver is a major security concern. It could be used as a weapon or wielded in an escape attempt. That type of thing doesn’t happen much in women’s prisons, but it doesn’t matter. This will delay our meal and consign us to our cells until it’s found.

Everyone sighs and moans except Lindsay. She’s wiping tears. Our eyes meet and I ask her what’s wrong. She answers, “I’m indigent.” I immediately understand. Just like in the free world, the poorest in prison are always the first suspects for wrongdoing.

“If you’re not receiving money, you’ve got a target on your back.”

The print shop where Lindsay and I work is part of Texas Correctional Industries (TCI), a division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice that sells goods made by prison laborers to government agencies including hospitals and public schools. TCI made $77 million in 2019, according to a 2022 report by the ACLU and the University of Chicago. Yet, we’re forced to work for free. If we refuse, we can be punished with solitary confinement, cell confinement, and loss of access to phone calls and visitation.

In 2019, the Texas state House held a hearing about paying incarcerated workers $1 a day. The bill died in committee. Maybe Texas had a $32.7 billion budget surplus in 2023 because it refuses to pay us for our labor. Instead, incarcerated women have to rely on people sending money from the outside to get by.

If you’re not receiving money, you’ve got a target on your back. Security insists that when something is stolen, common sense dictates they focus their attention on the people who can’t afford to purchase things. By that logic, I guess Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried both stole because they were destitute?

We’ve stripped a few more times, but there’s still no screwdriver. The guards are fed up. They begin threatening to transfer us “ungrateful cunts” to the brutal fields to pick vegetables and cotton. Our captors remind us that the print shop is a privileged job. We don’t have to ask permission to use the bathroom or drink from the water fountain, and it’s the only job with air conditioning. That is our compensation.

The print shop floor is crawling with guards. A sergeant waddles toward us waving two rosters. One has everyone with a theft conviction highlighted in pink. Once a thief, always a thief. The other lists our account deposits and balances.

The sergeant calls Lindsay and a new hire named Amy up. Amy offers the sergeant her Prison ID to confirm her healthy account balance. Once Amy had explained to her loved ones that she would be required to do the same type of sex work that got her imprisoned just to be able to afford deodorant, they’d begun sending her money.

The standard prison slang reply to an inquiry about finances is, “My family love me.” Translation: “I have someone who cares enough about me to send me money.” I am one of those lucky few.

Lindsay is not. Her only deposits are $25 every six months from a church. Suspicion drips from the sergeant’s voice. He asks, “How do you take care of yourself?”

Another guard pipes in, “I’d sell a kidney before I let any woman in my family go without in this place.”

I turn my head. I’m embarrassed for Lindsay.

“I don’t steal, I make do. I don’t sell my body, mouth, medication, or stolen items,” she says. “I come to work every day, even when I’m sick.”

My friend Emma has nothing to lose. She’s about to be released in a few days. She jumps up and interrupts Lindsay’s humiliation. “This is bullshit! Why would we steal a screwdriver? Perverted SOBs bring us make-up, drugs, vibrators, and phones. [A corrections officer] will bring a damn AR-15 for a pubic hair!”

The sergeant shakes his tear gas canister and makes Emma sit in a corner. Then he turns back to the rest of us. “Y’all welcome to join her if y’all think she right.”

We march back to our stifling cells and try to sleep.

These are the things Lindsay’s pride didn’t let her tell the sergeant. She sells her toilet paper rolls for 20-cent bars of soap. She handwashes sneakers and boots for a $1 bottle of lotion. She stores people’s contraband for $5 a month, which buys her two shampoos. She performs one-hour foot and back massages for $3 of toothpaste. She only receives half of the $25 that the church sends her after court costs and fee deductions.

The thing that Lindsay hates the most about being without funds is writing Florida Mike. He pays $20 a month to the person who writes him the best sex letter based on the topic he provides. Examples include sex with snapping turtles, sex with three generations of women, or sex with a plastic bag. Lindsay is always busy. Even in prison, time is money.

Lindsay is already in her mid-40s with a lengthy sentence ahead of her. The constant work after working all day isn’t sustainable. Her nightmare is to become what the guards call a “matchmaker.” The more apt term would be groomer: Older women without money survive by giving guards access to the new arrivals; in exchange, there are perks.

When we return to the print shop the next day, the officers are jovial and joking. Turns out the maintenance supervisor had the screwdriver in his jacket all along. No apologies are made. Just a command to meet our daily quota.

I’m enraged. But Lindsay looks relieved. We both know that, for her, this respite will be short-lived.