Work Opportunities in Jail

Video Transcript

"What's up? My name is Natural and I'm here on behalf of Expert Village to discuss how to survive in prison. In this clip I will be discussing an aspect of survival in prison that ties directly to commissary. That would be working and/or hustling when you're in a prison. While hustling in any sort of a prison is quite obvious not allowed by prison rules and regulations. That has nothing to do with the fact that it happens on a daily basis. While you're in prison, you pretty much have to work. If you're not attending school, you are forced to work a job and it's very much like slave labor. I think they pay something like 18 cents an hour. Pretty close to that. I think when I was incarcerated, the most that you could make in state pay a month would of been $24. That really doesn't stretch very far when it comes to the notion of buying shampoo and soap and toothpaste and God forbid you actually smoke cigarettes, all that stuff gets very expensive very quickly. Regarding the work system in prison though, there is an honor standard and you can work your way up to a better job. Now I know that sounds insane but a better job in prison means you're doing a lot less work or more comfortable work for a lot less time. You know what I'm saying? And you're still getting paid the same amount of money as anybody else. On the other hand for those people who don't have people in the outside to send them money for commissary and they don't have a cake or coffee type job at the CFF or somewhere in the prison environment, they may ought to hustle. A few hustles that I was aware of when we were there were things like doing hair, like braiding hair or styling peoples hair. Ironing peoples clothes for them, doing peoples laundry for them. Two for ones was a big deal and that was like basically where you give somebody a pack of cigarettes and on the next shopping day, they return you return you two. So these are the types of hustles that people use to survive in the prison environment."