When you hear the words “prison food”
you probably conjure up something less than appetizing in your mind. The truth about prison food probably isn’t
too far from what you are imagining. We are going to take a look at the types of
food inmates receive and if it even reaches basic health standards. Although being put in prison is a punishment
for crimes committed, the food being served to inmates in the United States is also a
crime. Literally. Prisons, and the private companies that provide
the meals to them, have been sued numerous times for not meeting basic health requirements. So what is it like eating prison food every
day? Food and routine vary from prison to prison,
but let’s follow a prisoner as he makes his way through the culinary adventure that
is a prison meal. The time is 4:30 A.M. The prisoner wakes up for breakfast. Wakeup time and breakfast is different in
different institutions. It can be as early as 4:30 or as late as 10:30
A.M. Once in a prison the routine around meal times
normally remains constant. After breakfast our prisoner is not fed a
meal again until early to late evening. In some prisons the incarcerated only get
two meals a day, with a light snack in between. The prisoner wakes up to unsweetened grits,
a slice of bread, and less than half an egg. Just like every other day, it is not enough
food to satisfy his grumbling stomach. In fact, for most prisoners, the meals are
well below their recommended caloric intake levels. Other days breakfast for the prisoners consists
of a peanut butter bar, biscuit, hard-boiled egg, and fruit. Although fruit is a rarity, and fresh fruit
that hasn’t started to mold yet is even more rare. No matter how you look at it, our prisoner
is going to be hungry long before another meal is served. If the prison serves lunch the prisoner can
look forward to a bologna sandwich, which is made of mystery meat and not deli style
bologna. The alternative to the bologna sandwich could
be two sandwiches with a dab of peanut butter. It’s hard for the prisoner to decide which
is better. The mystery meat could make him sick, but
the dab of peanut butter is never satisfying… even if there are two. With the sandwich comes a small bag of corn
chips. The prisoner eats slowly to try and make the
food last. But there just isn’t enough to make it last
for very long. He often rips open the bag of chips and licks
the crumbs out of the inside for a little more sustenance. It has been a long time since the prisoner
has received any milk. The prison ran out a long time ago and hasn’t
gotten another shipment yet. This happens all too often, and milk becomes
a delicacy rather than a staple. Sometimes the prisoner is served tea that
clearly does not have the right proportion of water to tea mix. It is really watered down tea. If the prisoner is lucky he can get a water
downed flat soda as well. At the end of the day our prisoner finally
gets a slightly larger meal for dinner. However, larger doesn’t mean better. In fact, oftentimes it is the dinner menu
that provides the most risk for inmates. The menu rotates, but food often runs out
or is not available, so it is possible the same thing is served for dinner multiple nights
in a row. An average dinner can consist of chicken livers
with a half scoop of veggies. Another dinner could be mystery meat with
coleslaw. For special occasions our prisoner gets two
cold hot dogs with onions and beans. Sometimes the bread that comes with dinner
is moldy, sometimes it’s not. There is no way to tell what the quality of
the food is until it is slapped onto the prisoner's tray. What if the prisoner wants to supplement,
or kill the taste, with some salt and pepper? It’s not available in the prison cafeteria,
instead, prisoners have to purchase these supplements from the prison commercary. The prices for food and condiments have been
jacked up by the prison system, and only a very few are lucky enough to have money to
purchase such items. So, the food in the commissary that is decent
is severely overpriced, and the food served in the cafeteria is what was cheapest to buy
for that time of year. Sometimes the prisoner wonders if the meals
just come from the garbage. Unfortunately that is not too far from the
truth. There have been cases of food worker employees
being fired after serving food from the trash to inmates. In one case an employee threw away the leftover
food before all of the prisoners were fed. When the food worker noticed their mistake,
they took the food out of the trash and reheated it in the oven. The employee then served it to the hungry
inmates. In the food worker’s defences, they stated
that they washed the food from the garbage before cooking and serving it to the inmates. How nice of them. Some nights prisoners are served creamed chipped
beef. This has been designated as “shit on a shingle”
by inmates. The name comes from the taste and consistency
of the creamed chipped beef. On nights where this dish is served the prisoners
tend to opt out of dinner and just wait until breakfast. Another problem that plagues inmates is unreliable
kitchen appliances. There have been a number of reports that prisoners
have gone up to three months without hot food due to broken ovens and pressure cookers. Workers claim that most of the time the ovens
and skillets are inoperable anyways, so they do the best with what they have. During these times prisoners can look forward
to eating cold pasta or room temperature cheese sandwiches. Not grilled cheese, just a slice of cheese
between two pieces of bread. Yum. Even when everything is working, and the pantry
is fully stocked, prisoners sometimes receive food past its due date, or that has already
begun to rot. Over the past few years reports by human rights
organizations have brought to light that inmates have been served rotten chicken tacos, rancid
beef, and cake that has had bites taken out of it by rodents. Moldy bread is more common than you would
think, and some inmates have been told to just eat around the moldy parts. Apparently the Eighth Amendment that outlawed
cruel and unusual punishment does not apply to inmates' food. So why is prison food so bad? We understand that prisoners may not be the
nicest people, but should we be feeding them food that will literally make them sick or
poison them? The Eighth Amendment probably does forbid
that right? So how did we get here in our modern and civilized
world? It all started with the privatization of prison
food. Many prisons now outsource their food services
to private companies. These companies are for-profit so they are
trying to make money. Normally situations where for-profit companies
have a captive consumer base never ends well for the consumer. The mission of for-profit companies is to
make money using whatever means possible, even if it is at the expense of their consumers. You can see where this might go bad for prisoners. In order to make money, the companies that
provide food for prisons on average spend $1.13 to $1.25 per prisoner per day. Imagine only having $1.25 to spend on food
each day. I don’t know about you, but that wouldn’t
even last me through breakfast. And the companies aren’t the only ones benefiting
from spending miniscule amounts of money on food for prisoners. Law enforcement officials can also benefit
greatly. For instance take Morgan County Alabama Sheriff
Greg Bartlett. Under the current system, Alabama sheriffs
are given a budget $1.75 to feed a prisoner for a day. If the sheriff can reduce the cost to below
$1.75 they get to keep the money that’s left over. Think about that. If an Alabama sheriff can cut costs of prisoners’
meals, they get to keep the leftover money. That is not a very good incentive program
to keep the prisoners fed well. On January 8, 2009 Sheriff Greg Bartlett was
convicted and sentenced to prison after he admitted to pocketing over $200,000 allocated
for meals for inmates in the county jail. That is $200,000 that came from short changing
prisoners on food. The companies that provide prisons with food
have been cited by the CDC and other watchdog organizations for gross misconduct. Health code violations in prisons run rampant. Prisoners have found rodent feces in their
food, and through random inspections of just two jails there were 15 "maggot-related incidents,"
that forced 30 sick inmates to be quarantined. The meals are not the only problem with the
privately run prison food companies. The employees hired by these for-profit companies
are causing problems as well. Employees have been caught humping inmates,
smuggling drugs in cell phones, and one former Michigan employee is facing charges for putting
out a hit on a prisoner. Apparently with bad prison food comes bad
employees as well. All of the corner cutting and misconduct has
led to health and safety problems in U.S. prisons. When prisoners enter the system they can lose
as many as 20 pounds in the first few weeks due to lack of calories. In 2008 over 270 prisoners in Florida’s
Santa Rosa Correctional Institution became sick after eating chili. The meat was not kept at the correct storage
temperature and had gone bad. According to the CDC inmates are 6.4 times
more likely to suffer from food related illnesses than the general population. Even if you believe that prisoners don’t
deserve fresh food, it is hard to argue that prisons should actively take part in making
them sick through spoiled food. Also, when inmates become sick, more money
has to be pumped into the system to make them better. So in the long run it would be beneficial
to make sure all basic health code standards are met. Prisoners are constantly looking for ways
to escape the food and other inadequacies of the prison system. What better way to forget about the gross
meals and terrible conditions than drinking a little alcohol? Alcohol is obviously illegal in prisons, but
inmates make their own alcoholic beverage called pruno. It is a wine made by fermenting cafeteria
supplies such as fruit, sugar, and ketchup. Sure it tastes awful, but it will get you
inebriated and that is the goal if you have to deal with awful food every day. Unfortunately, this drink can lead to alcohol
poisoning and has other negative side effects, but most prisoners feel it is worth the risk. Another downside to the terrible food in the
prison system is safety risks. Prison food has been known to cause riots
and fights. The ACLU found a connection between privately
run prison food systems and increased safety risks associated with those prisons. It seems that when skimping on food there
are more than just health risks to worry about. In a Kentucky prison unreasonably small portion
sizes caused a riot in 2009 that left eight guards and eight prisoners injured. These situations can be avoided by providing
food that meets basic quality and quantity requirements. It is no surprise that prisoners take the
food they eat seriously. When incarcerated prisoners lose all their
rights, belongings, and contact with the outside world. They are at the mercy of prison guards and
wardens. Food is the one thing that they still have
that can bring them some sort of happiness. When food is given in smaller and smaller
quantities, or what is being served is full of rodent droppings this upsets prisoners,
and rightfully so. Safety in prisons could be better just by
making sure that the food being served is not spoiled, and the portions are of adequate
size. It seems like the choice between the safety
of the people who work in prisons and spending a little more on food would be an easy one
to make. Unfortunately that is not what we see at the
moment in U.S. prisons. Then again people in prisons are there because
they have done terrible things right? Shouldn’t they be punished in every way? Something we should keep in mind is that not
everyone in prison is there for the same reason. There are kids who have made a bad decision,
but are still just kids. There are people who were arrested for selling
marijuana, which is now legal in many states. Should they be starving and eating rotten
food? Basic human rights should be maintained no
matter what. Also, what about people who are in jail awaiting
trial? These people may not be guilty of any crime,
yet they’re subjected to the tainted food of for-profit corporations while they wait
to be proven innocent. It would seem that if we treat everyone as
humans, and meet basic food safety standards, everyone would be better off for it. Maybe it is time to take the food in our prisons
out of the hands of greedy corporations that serve literal garbage. If we increase food quality in our prisons,
health and safety will increase as well. It’s a win win. If you want to learn more about the prison
system check out our video Jail vs Prison - What's ACTUALLY The Difference? Or maybe you want to know more about notorious
prisoners, so watch What Did Alcatraz's Most Dangerous Prisoners Do?
