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MARCHING POWDER

because of this, anyone who wasn't independently wealthy had to have a job.

At the very top of the prison economy were the big businessmen who continued to manage their empires using specially installed fax and phone lines. Among them was San Pedro's most notorious inmate. Barbachoca – 'Red Beard' – had been charged with trafficking 4.2 tonnes of cocaine after his aeroplane, which the newspapers called 'el narco avion', was intercepted in Lima, in Peru.

The prison middle class was made up of those inmates lucky enough to have had a trade or profession on the outside that they could continue to practise on the inside. There were cooks, painters, restaurateurs, carpenters, electricians, cleaners, accountants and doctors. There were artesanos who sold their artwork and tiny handicrafts – such as paintings and figurines – to visitors. There was even a lawyer in fraud, who, although he obviously couldn't accompany them to court, offered cheap legal advice to the inmates. Basically, anything you wanted done or anything you wanted to buy, you could, and if they didn't have it, someone could get it in for you for a small commission. But in fact, many of the services were actually cheaper than on the outside, so sometimes bargain hunters came into the prison to visit imprisoned barbers and dentists who offered cut-price deals to attract trade.

At the very bottom of the economy were those who didn't have a trade or profession, but who performed the countless small jobs around the place that needed to be done. These ranged from being one of the messengers – known as taxistas – who informed inmates when they had a visitor waiting at the gate, to people who shined shoes or sold tokens for the phone cabins. These prisoners made next to nothing, but at least they managed to stay alive.

And finally, for those who couldn't find a ticket to survival within the legitimate economy, there was an even bigger black-market economy in which inmates could continue to practise their other trade – being criminals.

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They say that prisons don't actually help to reform prisoners; that, in fact, they make them worse because all the time they are mixing with other convicted felons, which allows them to make new contacts and share knowledge and skills that help them to commit bigger and better