The Economics of Captivity

The irony of my situation was crystallized when Cisternas called me into his office to begin English lessons. A slave teaching his master. “Gerald” dutifully copied down notes while I, the prisoner, served as an unpaid instructor—one of three gendarmes I was teaching at the time. The brownie points were welcome, but something concrete would have been nicer. Otherwise, I would just as soon read my novel or play chess.

Meanwhile, other inmates traded their time for actual money. Cristián had ensconced himself in the barber room after someone gave him a wall charger for 118’s previously unknown tattoo machine. He was now earning money to send home to his almost-wife and infant son as the machucados lined up to permanently stain their skin with purple ink. The prison economy was a distorted mirror of the free market—distorted because the fundamental condition of freedom was absent, but recognizable in its basic operations of supply, demand, barter, and the ceaseless human drive to improve one’s material circumstances. Private property, as Miami had remarked, is inextricably linked with human life and liberty; without it, civilization ends. The prison proved this negatively—where the state controlled every resource, the result was not equality but a vicious hierarchy of exploitation.

The Floating Island and the Hunger for Truth

A British friend had suggested I watch Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons on Netflix. After finishing five seasons, I could say that módulo 118 was better than hellholes in Honduras, Brazil, the Philippines, and New Guinea—though it was far behind the hotel-like conditions of Germany, Norway, and Denmark. The floating island was, comparatively, a better vessel than most. But it was still a prison. And the fundamental division on board—between those who hungered and those who were drunk—obtained everywhere, in every prison, in every country, in every century.

The Apostle Paul’s rebuke to the Corinthians was not merely about table manners at the Lord’s Supper. It was about the scandal of inequality within the body of Christ—some gorging while others went without, some treating the assembly as an occasion for indulgence while others came seeking nourishment they could not find elsewhere. The prison patio was not a church, and most of the men on it were not believers. But the pattern was the same. Some of us hungered for truth, for justice, for the exercise of the mind, for fellowship with serious people, for the Word of God rightly divided. Others—the majority—were drunk: on drugs, on ignorance, on television, on gossip, on the sheer inertia of purposeless days. And the system that confined us all was designed, whether consciously or not, to keep the drunk drunk and the hungry hungry.

“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). That promise sustained me on the floating island. It sustained Miami, who read books, thought critically, and refused to sign confessions to sex crimes he did not commit. It sustained Guillermo, who endured rats and knives rather than surrender to the drug culture. It sustained Alexis, who read his Bible quietly and brought avocados for guacamole. And it would sustain any believer who finds himself confined—physically, intellectually, or spiritually—in a world that rewards stupor and punishes wakefulness.

I solaced myself in my mind using my imagination. But more than imagination, I solaced myself in the promises of a God who does not abandon the hungry to their hunger or leave the sober man defenseless among the drunk. “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit” (Psalm 34:18). On the floating island, adrift in the South Pacific of the Chilean penal system, that nearness was enough.

Action Steps

Supply books and reading material to prisoners systematically. The book supply chain through encomienda was fragile, dependent on one faithful wife, her childhood friend, our household maid, several Baptist pastors, and a tolerant guard. Churches and prison ministries should establish organized book programs—building small libraries in módulos, coordinating with families to deliver appropriate reading material, and advocating with prison administrators for policies that facilitate rather than obstruct intellectual activity among inmates.

Teach critical thinking, not just devotional content. Miami’s observation that most reos could only “regurgitate or parrot” information reveals a profound intellectual poverty that devotional material alone cannot address. Prison ministries should include educational components such as reading groups, discussion seminars, writing workshops, and instruction in basic reasoning. A man who learns to think is a man less easily exploited—by the drug trade, by manipulative inmates, by a corrupt system, or by false religion.

Expose and oppose the prison drug economy. The economic evidence presented in this chapter—stable drug prices during visitor-free quarantine periods—demonstrates that the gendarmes, not visitors, are the primary suppliers of illegal drugs in prison. Churches and advocacy organizations should use such evidence to challenge official narratives and press for preaching against such vices, without succumbing to the foolish belief that the state will reform the problem or that state actors will actually want to curtail or stop it.

Support sober and intellectually active inmates specifically. Guillermo’s situation—threatened with knives for refusing drugs, housed with eight machucados on a rat-infested floor—illustrates what happens to the “hungry” man in a system designed for the “drunk.” Ministry resources should be directed specifically toward inmates seeking to live purposefully: legal advocacy for better housing assignments, material support for reading and study, and regular visits that reinforce their commitment to sobriety and growth.

Model intellectual seriousness in your own life. The contrast between reading and poker, between economic analysis and gossip, between sustained attention and the endless scroll of a screen—these contrasts exist outside prison as well as inside it. Christians who wish to serve prisoners effectively must first be readers, thinkers, and students of Scripture themselves. You cannot share what you do not possess. “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

Discussion Questions

The chapter uses the metaphor of a floating naval carrier to describe prison life. In what ways does this metaphor illuminate the experience of confinement? How does it apply—perhaps in modified form—to the spiritual condition of people who are technically free but intellectually and spiritually adrift?

Paul’s rebuke in 1 Corinthians 11:21 addresses inequality at the Lord’s table. How does the division between “hungry” inmates (readers, thinkers, seekers) and “drunk” inmates (those stupefied by drugs, ignorance, and purposelessness) reflect the same spiritual dynamic Paul was addressing? What responsibility do those who hunger for truth bear toward those who are drunk on lies?

The economic analysis of the prison drug trade reveals that the system designed to punish vice actually sustains it. How does this reality connect to the biblical theme of corrupt earthly powers (Psalm 94:20, Isaiah 10:1-2)? What is the Christian’s obligation when the state itself is complicit in the destruction of the people it claims to govern?

Reading is described in this chapter as a form of resistance—intellectual, spiritual, and even political. What books, besides the Bible, have most shaped your own thinking? If you were confined to a cell with limited space and a fragile supply chain, what five books would you ask to have smuggled in under a jacket, and why?