Abuse of the Incarcerated through Food

A couple weeks ago, there was a minor news item on how Alabama jails are granted only a dollar seventy-five per inmate per day for food. The article went on to explain how many Sheriff's departments are able to profit even on that.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hOBGWh72vwr9ZKWFHllMQoBEjULAD90N2VR00
Critics charge that Alabama is, in effect, paying law enforcement to skimp on food and may be rewarding sheriffs for mistreating prisoners.
"It's a bad system, and it ought not be that way," said Buddy Sharpless, executive director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama.

The trick here is that every penny not put into an inmate's stomach goes into the Sheriff's wallet. My experience in Arkansas indicates that Alabama is not the only state to pay bonuses to sheriffs for abusing inmates. This may explain the legendary program of Maricopa County, Arizona, where the sheriff boasts of how much money he saves on jail food. He claims to be saving taxpayer dollars, but the truth is that he is probably pocketing the savings for himself, as do sheriffs in Alabama and Arkansas. Additionally, the federal government gives $45 to jails that hold federal prisoners, showing the disparity in attitude as well as providing the sheriffs with additional funds, which probably still go into their pockets.

Also in question is adherence to federal guidelines regarding nutritional requirements for the institutionalized. I was told by several officials with the jail in Sharp County, Arkansas that the food met caloric requirements, providing at least two thousand calories a day. I mentioned that calories were irrelevant if they came mostly from sugar and starch, to which the response by the jail administrator, as it frequently was from her, was that she didn't think that law applied to them. In some jails in Arkansas this is interpreted to mean that an inmate will get three bologna sandwiches and two Oreos per day.


Hearing of my complaints after a few months, the cook brought her budget to show me, so that I could see that there wasn't much money to work with. However, I was aware, from communications with jail staff and outsiders that the Sharp County Jail received at least ten percent of its food from donations. I also learned that officers with Sharp County Sheriff's Office regularly used the jail's pantry as a personal food bank. Seeing her budget, I was surprised to find that the jail budgeted an actually relatively fixed amount that varied little with inmate population. This meant, of course, that as the inmate population expanded, the cost per inmate contracted. On the best days, the jail spent as much as sixty-six cents per meal; this did not occur very frequently. The overall average was somewhere below fifty-eight cents. Of course, this gives the sheriff excellent reasons to stuff his jail, as his margins improve and his bonus increases.

The food served by the cook, a civilian contractor or jail employee, was usually below the standards that a soup kitchen must follow and frequently ghastly. Many times, she served things, like pre-packaged cheese, that were over a year past their shelf date. Very often, food was inadequately cooked, being merely thawed as opposed to actually cooked. I also have it from several sources that this cook did not observe mandated hygiene standards, going frequently through a meal's preparation, handling raw meat, dairy products, breadstuffs, etc., without ever washing her hands. Then she would serve the meal with those same bare hands.