Over the course of 9 months, The Appeal developed a commissary database, tracking prices for the staple items commonly purchased by incarcerated individuals. What they found is exactly what families already know: jail and prison commissary prices are predatory, often marking items up 600% higher than what they would be on the outside.
Source — The Appeal Commissary Database
Locked In, Priced Out: How Much Do Prison Commissaries Charge?
A nine-month investigation by The Appeal tracking prices across jail and prison commissary systems nationwide. The database documents markups on food, hygiene products, clothing, electronics, and religious items — providing the first comprehensive price comparison between commissary costs and retail equivalents. Read the full investigation →
What the Database Found — Three Examples
Item
Retail Price
Prison Price
Context
Fan
Indiana prison
Indiana prison
$23.00
Lowes
Lowes
$33.00
A basic necessity for heat management in facilities where air conditioning is limited or absent
Bible vs. Quran
Connecticut
Connecticut
$4.55
Bible price
Bible price
$25.99
Quran price
Quran price
Not a markup issue alone — a religious discrimination issue. Both are constitutionally protected religious texts. The pricing gap is not accidental.
Ramen noodles
Florida prison
Florida prison
$0.35
Target
Target
$1.06
Three times retail for the cheapest food available. When state meals are nutritionally inadequate, commissary food is not a luxury — it is a survival necessity.
Where the Money Goes
Kickbacks go right back into the state DOC. Commissary vendors are typically awarded exclusive contracts with revenue-sharing agreements — meaning a percentage of every inflated sale flows directly back to the Department of Corrections. The state is not just allowing price gouging. In many cases, it is structurally incentivized to permit it. Every ramen packet at $1.06 instead of $0.35 is a small transfer of wealth from an incarcerated person’s family to the corrections budget.
Who Actually Pays
Incarcerated people earn wages of pennies per hour for prison labor — in Michigan, between $0.31 and $0.84 per hour. The cost burden falls primarily on families on the outside, who deposit money into commissary accounts to ensure their loved ones can afford food, hygiene products, and basic necessities the state does not adequately provide. Families already paying phone call costs, visitation travel, legal fees, and lost household income are also subsidizing state corrections budgets through these markups. This is what the 32,000 households from the Safer Michigan Act look like in practice.
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Related Coverage — The Financial Extraction Machine
How to cite: Williams, R. [Rita]. (2024, December 19). Jail and Prison Commissary Prices Are Predatory — And Families Pay the Price. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2024/12/19/examining-jail-and-prison-commissary-price-gouging/
