Marching Powder

I'm about half way through reading Marching Powder, the story of a British cocaine trafficker who finds himself in a Bolivian prison for five years. One of the biggest surprises to Thomas McFadden is the system of inmates paying for their own meals and jail cells. Although this seems like a ridiculous notion for Westerners (products of stable governments), having convicts pay for their stay makes complete sense when taken in context: Bolivia is plagued by poverty and families struggling to feed their own children; why use public funds to support criminals when the rest of the population is starving in the streets? In countries without sufficient funds to take care of upstanding citizens, the penal system (which in La Paz hasn't evolved much from that of ancient Rome) ends up underfunded and left to rely on self sufficient means to function.

If you like books like Gang Leader for the Day, Marching Powder is an equally interesting look into the inner workings of an underground society. I highly recommend reading this amazingly astonishing account of a third world jail’s social structure, micro-economy, drug culture, and systematic bribery.

Marching Powder