Moonshine, hooch, julep, toilet wine, clear—whatever they call it, over the past 30 years Tennessee’s prison bootleggers have improved their product immensely.
In the ’90s when I began my sentence, I mostly saw the kind of hooch that’s more like wine than clear liquor. A very weak wine, which everyone knew tasted like shit. It was usually made by mixing fruit scraps with a little liquid and sugar inside a garbage bag and leaving it to ferment. The “wine” is no longer a feature here, at least in my experience. If you start with the fermentation process and keep going, you can instead cook off the alcohol to make actual moonshine. That’s all anyone here drinks now.
Owen* and Charlie*, like myself, are incarcerated at South Central Correctional Facility, a private prison operated by Core Civic. Both are moonshiners.
Owen learned the trade from his grandfather. As a boy he would fill mason jars with fresh moonshine from his grandfather’s liquor stills in the woods in Southeast Tennessee, load them into the old Chevy truck and make deliveries around the outskirts of town.
“Grandpop taught me early on … if the po-po caught me, I was to say nothing,” Owen told Filter. “But I never got caught.”
Charlie is from a rural, mountainous part of the state where it was rare to see a doctor, or even go into town.
“If your leg hurt, or you had some rheumatism in your back, you took a dose of moonshine,” he told Filter.
There seems to be a growing demand for prison moonshine these days. Both Owen and Charlie said that more customers are seeking it out for a specific purpose: pain management.
Chronic pain is increasing, as access to medical care is being pared away.
One compelling reason is that opioid analgesics are rarely prescribed in prison. In limited cases, for example if someone has terminal cancer, they may be allowed small doses of morphine that they have to report to a nurse three times a day to take under supervision. But for almost everyone here living with chronic pain, the most they’ll be prescribed is acetaminophen.
Ced* never drank much alcohol before he came to prison. But he has two herniated disks, and one night the pain was so crippling he couldn’t get up off the floor. Medical staff advised him to exercise and stretch more.
“I can’t sleep at night, I have such bad back pain,” Ced told Filter. “But then I’ll get a bottle of liquor, mix it in a soda can and get the best sleep without pain.”
The cost of alcohol—here at least—is about on par with marijuana, and while many people would prefer the latter it’s often much more of a hassle. Marijuana will show up on random drug tests. It also requires a flame of some sort to light it. And like many other parts of prison life, access is controlled by gangs. Alcohol doesn’t require dealing with any of these; unlike the sale of other contraband substances, this is a side hustle that people with no gang affiliation are permitted to pick up.
In addition to the reduced risk of ending up in solitary, the product itself is safer.
Alcohol is less of a risk than it used to be. Back when the fermented liquor was more common, the smell of rotting food scraps was often a giveaway. Folks who were caught with alcohol would be taken to solitary confinement for a while. Today, it’s more likely they’ll just be told to pour it out. The understaffing crisis means that, even when they catch people manufacturing, corrections officers are not looking to give themselves the extra paperwork for a substance they don’t perceive as life-threatening. Charlie said that for years, one officer who knew he was a moonshiner would stop by every afternoon for a shot.
The more fear is stoked around fentanyl and methamphetamine, the more willing officers are to look the other way when they find contraband substances that are legal, and thus less stigmatized, in the free world. To a certain extent this includes marijuana, but mainly alcohol and tobacco.
When I began my sentence, tobacco wasn’t even considered contraband yet. Over the years prison cigarettes have become more dangerous, and smoking-related harms have quietly increased. Moonshine, on the other hand, has become safer.
Tennessee prisons no longer serve fruits or vegetables, so the fermentation process now usually involves corn product, rice or grits. Sugar is usually sourced from the dry cocoa mix sold at commissary; the chocolate can be shaken out, and the sugar remains. Tang or caramels will do the job, too.
Once the mix is in the garbage bags with a little soda pop, or water if that’s all that’s available, a tube from a toothbrush holder will be taped into the opening to allow the bag to burp—and not explode—as the alcohol develops. Shaved soap or baby powder inside a soap box makes a handy deodorizer to help avoid detection. After a few days when the bag stops expanding, the mash is ready to cook off—but not the way it used to be done.
Years ago, the small hot plates used to heat the mash, or “stingers,” were cut from brass covers pulled off drainage pipes. But the brass would often poison the liquor, and folks would end up in the hospital. These days, everyone seems to have found ways to upgrade their stingers to stainless steel, which does not have the same problem. As a result, more people are willing to give the product a try.
The prison moonshine market includes many people who aren’t involved with the rest of the contraband market. The biggest factor in why alcohol is becoming more popular for managing chronic pain is just that there is more chronic pain. The prison population, here and across the country, is getting older.
Charlie’s customers pay him in commissary items. Owen’s send the money to his family on the outside.
Owen and Charlie each said that in a given batch, about four out of five 16-ounce bottles make it to market. The fifth is usually discovered and poured out, or contaminated during the production process. Each batch requires an investment of around $75, and yields around $240—which means a lot, in a facility where there aren’t nearly enough jobs to go around.
“Ain’t got any outside help,” Charlie said. “So this feeds me and keeps my ass washed with soap.”
Charlie’s customers pay him in commissary items. Owen’s send the money to his family on the outside.
“I make enough to pay my momma’s trailer payment or car payment each month,” Owen said. “They depend on me to help them; they are too old to work anymore.”
*Names have been changed for sources’ protection
Photograph of alcohol production inside a Georgia state prison, Anonymous