You know how in movies and TV shows about prison, inmates use cigarettes as currency? That's apparently not the case in Florida. The preferred jailhouse currency across the Florida penal system is Mrs. Freshley's Grand Honey Buns.

According to the St. Petersburg Times, anyway. Honey buns sell better than "tobacco, envelopes and cans of Coke" across Florida prisons, where 270,000 of the gross little things get sold every month. Is this an actual, verifiable trend, or just an excuse for a series of honey bun anecdotes? Who cares! Because the anecdotes are something else:

Inmates in North Carolina used honey buns to "sweeten a wine they fermented from orange juice."

Tank Johnson, the NFL player, would apparently eat 40 honey buns for dessert.

An unemployed father who was saved from the electric chair by public defenders paid his lawyers in honey buns. (The lawyer says: "They were good, too.")

In at least two cases, inmates have reportedly been murdered over honey buns.

A Florida bail bondsman was purportedly paying an inmate in honey buns for business referrals.

"At the Stock Island Detention Center, outside Key West, scheming inmates offered overnight arrestees in the jail's drunk tank an irresistible deal: their Social Security numbers for a honey bun. Using the numbers, they filled out tax forms with phony information a scam that cost the IRS more than $1 million in fraudulent refunds."

I don't know what to say! It's actually kind of depressing, isn't it, that the penal system is so awful people are killing each other over such terrible food? But the story about paying lawyers in honey buns is kind of sweet.

[St. Petersburg Times