Good Food Makes Good Inmates
Posted on Sun Dec 23, 2007 at 07:25:00 AM EST
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The Chicago Tribune has a three page article about how prison food has evolved the past few years, the theory being, bad food can cause riots and good food makes for good inmates.
Consider the problem: How to provide 2,900 calories a day for $.92 a meal.
Since the American Correctional Association created nutritional guidelines in the 1970s, prisoner meals have adhered to strict dietary standards. Jails and prisons have their own dietitians counting calories and sodium levels, as do contractors like Aramark, which provides food to facilities across Illinois.
Consider this statistic:
From 1900 to 1995, food sparked more than 40 of the 1,334 prison riots in the United States, including the country's deadliest uprising in 1971, when 43 people died at New York's Attica prison, said Gordon A. Crews, co-author of "A History of Correctional Violence."
More...
The jail riots were not so much about the quality of the food.
Most food-related outbreaks involved prisoners being restricted from the commissary, he said. Few riots were over nutrition. "Inmates didn't care about a balanced meal," he said. "They just didn't want maggots in it."
But fiscal constraints led to lessening of the meat and upping of the carbs like pasta and rice.
There's also security concerns:
At a Michigan prison, spinach is off the menu because inmates might dry the vegetable and smoke it, Wakeen said.
At the Lake County jail, pepper is absent because prisoners could throw it in a guard's face. And the meat at the facility must be tender enough to cut with a spoon—the only utensil inmates are allowed to use.
Then there's food used as punishment:
But some facilities also use food as a form of punishment. For inmates who throw food or trays, the Lake County Jail serves what is called a "nutra loaf," in which a meal is blended and baked to create a bland log that meets dietary requirements.
Here's a recipe for prison loaf. Some say it's worse than solitary confinement. An inmate in Illinois sued over the loaf, and lost.
If you really want to feel queasy, read about how they prepare the food in LA's county jails.
As you are enjoying your Christmas meal this year, I hope you'll give some thought to the more than 2 million inmates of our nation's jails and prisons. They may be offenders, and yes, some have done some bad things, but they are people too.
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