We Southerners have a lot to be proud of and a lot to be ashamed of. Too many of us lack the ability to tell on thing from another. Still some stories make me want to adopt a thick New York accent.
Here is news from Alabama about a local sheriff who was paid $1.75 per day by the state for feeding is prisoners. State law says if there is any money left over he could keep it, so he did.
(The court found him in violation of a previous consent decree, and so locked him up overnight.)
Let’s do the math. 300 prisoners * 1.75 = $525/day
$525/day * 365 days = $191,625/year
The story say he kept $212,000 over 3 years = $70,666/year
$70,666 out of an annual budget of 191,645/year is 36.8%
He more than doubled his salary by skimping on the chow.
We have a similar law in Indiana. It comes from the fact that the sheriff’s house was often attached to the jail, and the sheriff’s wife often cooked for the prisoners. In fact, we have just such a jail/sheriff’s house in our county that is now a museum.
[Tom T. Hall]Well, they motioned me inside a cell with seven other guys
One little barred up window in the rear
My cellmates said if they had let me bring some money in
We all could send the jailer for some beer
Well, I had to pay him double 'cause he was the man in charge
And the jailer’s job was not the best in town
Later on his wife brought hot bologna, eggs and gravy
The first day I was there I turned it down
Well, next morning they just let us sleep but I was up real early
Wonderin’ when I’d get my release
Later on we got more hot bologna, eggs and gravy
And by now I wasn’t quite so hard to please[/Tom T. Hall]
And remember, $1.75/day is the full portion, with him cutting back from that.
It sounds from the article like they were fed tiny portions and inadequate amounts - a couple examples were:
a lunch of 2 peanut butter sandwiches with barely any peanut butter used, plus some chips and flavored water
breakfast of less than a full egg, one piece of toast, and a few spoons of grits
dinner including some bits of undercooked chicken
It sounds like little to no vegetables or fruit, little protein (and what was provided wasn’t always safe!), and some cheap carbohydrates. Go hungry or pay more money to the system if your family is willing to wire money into your account for the on-site store.
Oddly enough, I actually have some info on prison food, as a friend of mine recently got out after three years in four different prisons, most of which he spent working as a cook. He says the food is very cheap, lots of soy in the ground meat, zero spices, lots of potatoes and pasta and bread and suchlike but he says that they very intentionally feed the prisoners a LOT of high carb calories with a lot of fat in it. He says the typical prison menu in the places he worked runs about 3000-3500 calories a day with very little in the way of vegetables and fruit–almost all of which will be frozen and processed. The aim is to keep the inmates fat and sluggish because it makes it easier to handle them. Hungry, pissed off, in shape inmates on a hair trigger mean more incidents and nobody wants that. They also restrict physical activity as well–they want slow, stupid butterballs in those cells. Good tactics, really…
Sounds right. Our resident prison physician (paging Quadgop the Mercotan) recently mentioned that his institution provides around 3500 calories per inmate per day.
The fundamental problem here is tying a law enforcement official’s income to the money he uses to feed his prisoners.
I don’t, in principle, have a problem with performance- and budget-related bonuses, but they should be restricted to things like saving money on xeroxing or overtime or whatever. But prison is, in itself, meant to be the punishment in our society; it’s not meant to go along with further punishment like malnutrition.
There should be state-mandated minimum levels of nutrition for prisoners, and those minimum levels should include not just calories, but the requisite vitamins and minerals for the adequate maintenance of the prisoners’ health. I think, also, that excessive fat and carbohydrates, and skimping on vegetables, is unacceptable.
I’m not arguing that these guys deserve a gourmet meal, but they should be adequately fed, and i also see no need to purposely make the food as unpalatable as possible, especially in cases where adding a bit of flavor would not add any significant cost.
They feed them that way because it’s cheaper, not to make them fat and easier to handle. Bulk pasta, rice, bread, potatoes, meat, and cheese are easy and inexpensive to turn into large numbers of meals. Canned fruits and veg are also cheaper in bulk, easier to get in bulk than fresh, and keep indefinitely. But whether the inmates are fat or skinny, jail staff doesn’t give a rat’s ass. Unless they’re making money off starving the inmates, apparently.
Most jails use BOP (Bureau of Prison) or DOC (state Department of Corrections) approved meal plans for their food service, regardless of whether they prepare the food inhouse using trusty (inmate) food-service workers or whether the contract the service out to a company like Aramark. If you use menus that are pre-approved for calorie and nutrition content, your food program is probably not attackable, no matter how bad the food tastes. For this reason, I imagine this sheriff was making his profit by skimping on food amounts, not food types. That seems consistent with the article.
