The sheriff has was dealing with small potatos. He should be marketing his facility as an adventure diet camp and charging thousands of dollars per week for each guest.
Small, mouldy potatos, probably.
With respect to the OP, I’m not sure that this sort of problem is uniquely Southern in character.
Great idea! I even have a name for it – The Auschwitz Advenure
Wow, really?
What would some typical meals be like?
I assume you’ve eaten the food. How bad is it? Or rather, is it actively bad or just kinda blah?
Is it possible for a motivated inmate to eat a better diet within the confines of the typical menu? In other words, if he wants to lower his fat content and get more vegetables, can he? (Assume he’s not on a special diet due to religion or health issues.)
It’s not bad, just carb-dense and pretty bland. Except for Nutriloaf, which I have not tried but from all reports tastes like ass.
It depends on the facility and how meals are handled. In a lock-down facility where meals are brought to the inmates in their cells, the inmate gets whatever is on the tray. There is no mechanism for special orders unless you have a medical or religious reason for a special diet. In a dorm facility with cafeteria-style service (inmates go through the line to get chow and eat at communal tables), the inmate may subtly ask the servers – almost always other inmates – for more of something, although the servers aren’t supposed to do that, everyone is supposed to get the same amount of the same thing.
Inmates who have money on their books can also access food stuffs through the commissary, including things like canned tuna and granola bars. But usually this means the inmates are eating a worse diet (chips, candy bars), not a better one. And of course it’s dependent on having some money in your commissary account.
The key to eating a better diet in jail or prison is portion control – don’t eat the whole amount. There’s really no other way to improve a meal of, say, spaghetti, bread, and canned corn.
What makes you unsure of that? Knowledge that Northern counties also allow their sheriffs to pocket the leftover meal money?
Well, I suppose it’s possible that Northern sheriffs are just naturally more trustworthy in such matters. I was just trying to give the Southern correctional system the benefit of the doubt.
Sorry, but I think you’re missing the point. Alabama law (admittedly, not necessarily representative of Southern law) specifically allows the sheriff to put into his personal pocket whatever he saves on the money provided for feeding his prisoners. That’s why I don’t get why you’re giving the benefit of the doubt. What other states allow a county sheriff to pocket, as personal income, the money that he saves by starving his inmates?
Indiana for one, at least according to Don’t Call Me Shirley. But my observation wasn’t about whether sheriffs in other states are legally permitted to pocket extra food money according to state law; it’s whether Southern sheriffs in general habitually starve their prisoners to exploit such laws, or if it was just this one guy. Or, to put it another way, whether such shenanigans are more endemic to the South than any other place.
I just think that if I’d been told the outline of this situation-- weird outdated local law, sheriff lining pockets at expense of prisoners’ health-- without any further specifics, I wouldn’t instantly have jumped to the conclusion: “Ah, this must have happened somewhere in the South.” Possibly I’m naive.
Ah, I get you now. No, you’re right.
In my hitch-hiking days, on the occasional nights in jail in the South, I usually got a coffee-like substance and eggs and grits for breakfast before they cut me loose; much better than this guys prisoners got.
It’s the equivalent of bad high school or hospital food - institutional and boring but not actively offensive.
Inmates get two choices; the main meal or the alternative meal. The alternative meal will offer a meatless substitute to the entree. There’s an entree, a couple of sides (usually heavy on the starches), a dessert, bread, and a drink. Inmates are also allowed to request special religious meals (Jewish meals are popular because we buy those from an outside contractor rather than make them in house) or a special medical diet.
Not ass but it’s nothing you’d want to eat if you had a choice. It’s edible if you microwave it and add enough salt and pepper and ketchup to flavor it up some.
Jodi, as usual, you’re 100% right. Its just that when I read the above line, I visualized an auditorium of imnates in orange jumpsuits and bound by ankle, waist, and wrist restraints, and forced to watch the intro to a Richard Simmons DVD.
Maybe “Sweatin’ to the Felonies 3: Solitary Refinement”? 
I just checked with our head of dietary, it cost $1.15 a day per inmate.
Economies of scale help a lot.
Somewhat relevant: A couple lived a month on $1/day (each). It doesn’t seem pleasant, by any means, but it worked at the retail level.