Today I am battling SCI at Albion in regards to the quality of the food that I am being served. You may be thinking that prisoners have little to complain about, so the food is first on the list. Well, many prisoners do complain about the food because it is the first thing that you need. If you don't eat you will get weak, sick, starve and die. That is reality.
For many years now [this prison] has been serving less and poor quality food. Oh, except someone important comes to the prison.
Some rumors say that if a kitchen supervisor can cut food cost they get what they saved as a yearly bonus.
Once every so often, I don't know exactly when, the Health Department comes to the prison. We all know beforehand because the employees work hard to get everything just so. Oh, that's another day we get fed food that you can eat.
As I am a prisoner, I must depend on these prison employees to feed me. I need the food to stay healthy and alive.
Now comes the fun part. I'm not allowed to get a lot of fellow prisoners to complain. And most won't in fear of retaliation. So I take this step on my own.
Is there a way I can get the health department to come and inspect without forewarning the prison?
--A Pennsylvania prisoner
MIM adds: Prisoners have been reporting in ULK for years that the prisons are either cutting back on portions of food served, or serving fewer meals on the weekends and holidays to reduce staffing. The New York Times recently noticed this trend as well, reporting that some states are actively cutting down on prisoner food as a means of reducing budget deficits.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), whose captives often put in long days of hard labor in the sun, has cut prisoners' daily caloric allotment from the Department of Agriculture-recommended minimum of 2,800 for active men to 2,500. North Carolina now gives 2,700 calories per day, down from 3,300; and Virginia has cut out breakfast on Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays.
Of course the states can be as cheap as they want with prisoner food and it won't do much to help their budgetary problems -- not with guards' salaries soaking up 80 percent of corrections allotments and the courts and parole boards enforcing long and often unreasonable sentences. If there are food shortages under socialism we too would cut allocations for prisoners before, say, members of the people's army. But prisoners would be enemies of the people, tried by proletarian tribunals, their numbers would not be swelled by oppressed nationals on petty drug charges. And we would be reducing their food allowances to feed others, not to make prison a more profitable enterprise.
Source: "States Putting Inmates on Diets to Trim Budgets" 30 Sept.2003, NYT.