This is taken from the autobiographic account of Thomas McFadden, a British national who spent nearly five years in the San Pedro Prison in La Paz, Bolivia, for drug smuggling. With the help of another inmate, McFadden was able to set up a contract to purchase a prison cell from a Bolivian prisoner and to take over the cell for US$1,200, an amount that also included the former owner’s television, refrigerator and some of the furniture he had brought into the prison (Young and McFadden, 2004, pp 107–8).