{"id":363,"date":"2025-05-04T16:57:57","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T16:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/?p=363"},"modified":"2025-05-04T17:00:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T17:00:45","slug":"soap-or-toothpaste-how-prison-commissary-systems-force-inmates-to-choose-between-basic-necessities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/2025\/05\/soap-or-toothpaste-how-prison-commissary-systems-force-inmates-to-choose-between-basic-necessities\/","title":{"rendered":"Soap or Toothpaste: How Prison Commissary Systems Force Inmates to Choose Between Basic Necessities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Prisoners, set apart and largely isolated from the rest of society, are heavily reliant on the prison system to supply their day-to-day needs. However, in many instances, prisoners are not just given these necessities<\/a>. Rather, they are expected to purchase them themselves through the prison commissary<\/a>. Depending on the state<\/a>, inmates may earn money to spend at commissaries through working in prison<\/a>. Otherwise, family or friends on the outside may put money in an inmate\u2019s account<\/a>. However, the system of commissary poses a number of potential problems for those in incarceration: for one, many commissaries are plagued by price-gouging<\/a>. Mark-ups on items in commissary are sometimes as high as 600 percent.<\/a>  How do prisoners afford goods under these conditions? In short: many of them cannot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some inmates may receive some necessities if they are indigent, qualifying for indigency is often\u00a0incredibly difficult.<\/a>\u00a0In Georgia, inmates need to have\u00a0less than $10.00<\/a>\u00a0in their accounts to be indigent. In South Carolina, the cut-off amount for indigency is\u00a0$6.42 each month<\/a>. In some states, an inmate needs to have\u00a0less than $5.00<\/a>\u00a0in their accounts in order to qualify as indigent. In Virginia, the less-than-5-dollars cut-off is evaluated based on the funds that were available\u00a0during the\u00a0previous\u00a0<\/em>mouth<\/a>, meaning even an individual who\u00a0currently\u00a0<\/em>has less than $5.00 in their account could still not qualify as indigent. For North Carolina, there is no specific dollar amount, and indigency is just defined as having \u201cno money to purchase basic hygiene items such as\u00a0soap or deodorant.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put some of these amounts in perspective, a box of tampons is around\u00a0$6.60 after tax<\/a>\u00a0in Virginia and\u00a0$6.33<\/a>\u00a0in South Carolina, making tampons either the only product some South Carolina inmates could afford to buy in a mouth, or completely unaffordable for some Virginia inmates. Even for inmates not in need of feminine hygiene products, other less expensive toiletries may quickly add up to be unaffordable to non-indigent inmates. For example, say an inmate needed access to, at minimum, a toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, soap, shampoo, and deodorant. In South Carolina state prisons, the cheapest available options for each of those products would be as follows:\u00a0$0.79<\/a>,\u00a0$0.92<\/a>,\u00a0$1.39<\/a>,\u00a0$0.62<\/a>,\u00a0$1.84<\/a>,\u00a0$1.92<\/a>, for\u00a0a total of $7.48<\/a>, over a dollar more than the indigency cut-off.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Issues continue to arise even if inmates in prisons do qualify as indigent. An inmate who is completely reliant on the indigent hygiene kits is left at the mercy of whatever prison officials have deemed \u201cnecessary,\u201d which in many cases falls short of actual needs. The supplies that are provided to indigent inmates varies widely\u00a0by state.<\/a>\u00a0In some states, like Georgia, indigent inmates are given funds, but are not given any goods \u2013 the inmate is still responsible for budgeting and\u00a0deciding what to purchase.<\/a>\u00a0Indigent inmates in South Carolina are given one tube of toothpaste, one toothbrush, three soaps, two or three 3-in-1 gels, two sticks of deodorant, four disposable razors,\u00a0and a comb.<\/a>\u00a0Basic hygiene kits in Virginia also include\u00a0denture cleaner and adhesive.<\/a>\u00a0While better than nothing, these basic necessities do not include other essentials like feminine hygiene products, or products that help provide basic comfort like lotions or over-the-counter medicines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some prisoners may be able to scrounge up money to buy additional items through prison jobs. However, pay for prison labor is on average less than a dollar<\/a> an hour. North Carolina inmates may be paid as little as $0.40 an hour.<\/a> Inmates in North Carolina often work in back-breaking outdoor labor, such as on plantations and farms<\/a>, on state roads<\/a>, or firefighting<\/a>. For the lowest paid inmates in North Carolina to buy a four-ounce bottle of sunscreen (priced at $5.16<\/a>), they would have to work nearly 13 hours. Other states like Georgia<\/a> and South Carolina<\/a> do not even pay inmates for their labor, leaving individuals no way to procure funds if they do not qualify for indigency and have no one on the outside who is able to give them money. Even for paid inmates like those in North Carolina, already low wages often become even lower after the prison deducts money for various reasons such as court fines, taxes, and room and board<\/a>. Some prisons deduct up to 80 percent<\/a> of the wages awarded to inmates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The system of commissary in prisons does little to ensure the basic needs of prisoners are met. By commodifying inmates\u2019 access to products essential for basic hygiene and comfort, prisoners may be forced to make difficult decisions between necessities, labor for days to purchase items, or simply go without. In recent years, inflation<\/a> has compounded problems with affordability, but that does not account for the whole issue. For instance, in North Carolina, each state prison gets to set their own commissary prices, and many are choosing to markup prices to increase prison profits<\/a>. Without regulations on how prisons run commissary, inmates will continue to struggle making ends meet.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kyra Goins <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Class of 2026, Staff Member<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prisoners, set apart and largely isolated from the rest of society, are heavily reliant on the prison system to supply their day-to-day needs. However, in many instances, prisoners are not just given these necessities. Rather, they are expected to purchase them themselves through the prison commissary. Depending on the state, inmates may earn money to spend at commissaries …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions\/366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/nccivilrightslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}