Mack of All Trades

Posted by Jackson on Oct. 2, 2008

With Baylen about to be pinched for running strange meats across state lines, the WSJ suggests he may want to keester a fish before heading to federal prison:

When Larry Levine helped prepare divorce papers for a client a few years ago, he got paid in mackerel. Once the case ended, he says, “I had a stack of macks.”

Mr. Levine and his client were prisoners in California’s Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex. Like other federal inmates around the country, they found a can of mackerel — the “mack” in prison lingo — was the standard currency.

“It’s the coin of the realm,” says Mark Bailey, who paid Mr. Levine in fish.

And just like certain assets topping our government’s Xmas wish list, mackerel is valuable precisely because of its undesirability:

Unlike those more expensive delicacies, former prisoners say, the mack is a good stand-in for the greenback because each can (or pouch) costs about $1 and few — other than weight-lifters craving protein — want to eat it.

But piscine procurement in the penitentiary is not as easy as throwing an M-80 into a school of jumping baitfish. It seems the free market is discouraged on the inside almost as much as it is out here:

The Bureau of Prisons views any bartering among prisoners as fishy. “We are aware that inmates attempt to trade amongst themselves items that are purchased from the commissary,” says bureau spokeswoman Felicia Ponce in an email. She says guards respond by limiting the amount of goods prisoners can stockpile. Those who are caught bartering can end up in the “Special Housing Unit” — an isolation area also known as the “hole” — and could lose credit they get for good behavior.

Makes sense. The dampening of a trade economy never leads to privation and violence, right?

The Journal has the full story here.

Tagged: economics, fish, Seafood, wall street journal Share This