Prison Food Is Making U.S. Inmates Disproportionately Sick

[Crude Abolitionist]

This won’t surprise anyone: The food served in correctional institutions is generally not very good. Even though most Americans have never tasted a meal dished up in a correctional kitchen, occasional secondhand glimpses tend to reinforce a common belief that “prison food” is scant, joyless, and unsavory—if not even worse. In August, the Detroit Free Press reported that a prison kitchen worker was fired for refusing to serve rotten potatoes. You can find nightmarish stories about maggots in national outlets like U.S.A. Today. Meanwhile, The Marshall Project’s more thorough, pictorial anatomy of daily correctional fareacross the country found that most offerings barely fill a cafeteria tray—let alone a hungry belly. Reports like these reinforce the sense that criminal justice has a gastronomic dimension, that unrelentingly horrid food is a standard feature of the punishment prisoners receive behind bars.

But new evidence suggests that the situation is worse than previously thought, and not just because prison food isn’t winning any James Beard awards. It’s also making inmates sick.

According to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), correctional inmates are 6.4 times more likely to suffer from a food-related illness than the general population. The report—which looked at confirmed outbreaks across the country between 1998 and 2014, and is the first update to the data in 20 years—underscores the fact that prison food is more than just a punch line, a flash point, or a gross-out gag on Orange Is the New Black. It’s a hidden public-health crisis.

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that inmates suffer from foodborne illness at a rate of 45 per 100,000 people annually, compared to only 7 per 100,000 in the general population. And 6 percent of allconfirmed outbreak-related cases of foodborne illness in the United States took place in correctional institutions—significant, considering that less than 1 percent of the country’s population is incarcerated. At the same time, “desmoteric” outbreaks—the kind that occur in correctional institutions—were the country’s largest outbreaks in four of the 17 years studied. (In six other years, correctional outbreaks ranked within the top five.) Thirty-seven states reported at least one desmoteric outbreak during the same span.

What’s to blame for the dramatic rates of foodborne illness in jails and prisons? That’s harder to say. In some ways, the CDC study is highly specific about what’s making people sick: The agency determined that Clostridium perfringens and Salmonella were the most common disease-causing agents, for instance, and that tainted poultry products were the most common single culprit. But the data leave us with more questions than answers, since these raw numbers remain mostly uninterpreted. The study doesn’t cover the more systemic factors causing outbreaks in the first place.

Many state correctional systems outsource their kitchen operations to private food-service companies, which are usually paid a flat rate per meal to provide a full range of services—from raw ingredients to kitchen equipment and staff. (Two of the biggest players are Trinity and Aramark, which, together, serve hundreds of millions of correctional meals per year.) This arrangement can greatly simplify things for correctional operators without the bandwidth to handle meal service—but it can result in a raw deal for inmates, since companies paid by the meal can keep more money when they skimp on food.

To get a sense of why these arrangements can be problematic, look to an ongoing fracas in Michigan. After the Detroit Free Press reported in 2015 on a range of issues, from maggot-ridden potatoes to employee drug smuggling, the state prematurely terminated its $145 million contract with Aramark. The arrangement had been a “nightmare,” according to Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, a “completely irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars ... [that] jeopardized the health and safety of inmates and prison employees alike."

For its part, Aramark denies any wrongdoing. In an emailed statement, Karen Cutler, Aramark’s vice president of communications, wrote that Aramark hires registered dietitians to design meals that provide 2,500 to 3,000 calories a day, and suggested the company had been the target of a negative PR campaign by “opponents of outsourcing and special-interest groups.”

After Michigan hired Aramark’s main competitor, Trinity, as a replacement in 2015, the problems seem to have continued. Early this year, the state imposed a $2 million fine on Trinity, including $905,750 for “unauthorized meal substitutions,” $357,000 for delays serving meals, and $294,500 for sanitation violations. According to the Free Press, the poor quality and quantity of food served by Trinity was one factor that led to a riot that caused $900,000 in damage at a prison in Kinross, Michigan. Trinity did not respond to a request for comment.

In this case, the solution is simple: Eliminate arrangements that motivate people to underspend on food, and meals are likely to improve. But though stories about rotten potatoes can excite one’s darker curiosities, the conclusions of the CDC report point to a far more mundane culprit: Inside a correctional facility’s walls, even basic food-safety standards can fall by the wayside.

Prison Food Is Making U.S. Inmates Disproportionately Sick

Long article but very painful to read. Innocent people in prison doing slave work are being fed poison fake food and it seems that nobody gives a fukk...

 

[Razor Reader]

 

[Crude Abolitionist]

Its getting worse in the prison slavery camps everyday...

 

[West Coast Avenger]

I remember when this shyt was served up....

Red Death....

An inmate worker handed me a large brown plastic tray. The slop – red death – looked like carroty vomit blended with blood. Meat and gristle in assorted shapes, shades and sizes were protruding from it. Gagging on the smell, I placed the tray on the nearest table, and sat down. Because I was one of the first to get served, the prisoners hadn’t mobbed the tables yet

....

 

[Crude Abolitionist]

I remember when this shyt was served up....

Red Death....


....

SMH.

I pray we don't have a bunch of morons run in here with the "DON'T GO TO JAIL THEN" moronic bullshyt.

They place us in these slavery prisons to work and slowly die.

 

[Easy-E]

And Americans are built not to give a fukk about these people (who are still American citizen)

And guess what; they are mostly black men in prison

I really need to get on my prison activist shyt--a shame on me

This system isn't broken, it doesn't work at all

 

[Crude Abolitionist]

And Americans are built not to give a fukk about these people (who are still American citizen)

And guess what; they are mostly black men in prison

I really need to get on my prison activist shyt--a shame on me

This system isn't broken, it doesn't work at all

I'm looking for a abolitionist group to join up with here in Texas. I want to be out in the field active fighting for our freedom.

I have so many articles on prison slavery will try to post one here everyday.

NEVER FORGET!!!

 

[Cheese McNair]

There’s also people that have serious allergy issues and can’t eat a lot of food. People that can’t eat dairy or peanut butter.


The world is a cold place. Deep down most humans don’t care about each other, so it’s easy for a population of people to get the short end of the stick.

 

[MillionMills]

SMH.

I pray we don't have a bunch of morons run in here with the "DON'T GO TO JAIL THEN" moronic bullshyt.

They place us in these slavery prisons to work and slowly die.

Don't go to jail brehs

 

[NYC Rebel]

The peanut butter concoction on stale bread given to us at Brooklyn House.

 

[Deflatedhoopdreams]

I know too many brehs in prison in Michigan.

 

[Buckeye Fever]

Rehabilitation my ASS

 

[Crude Abolitionist]

I found a prison slavery abortionist facebook group where I live at they meet once a month at a bookstore not too far from me... Going to have to check it out 2018 needs to be the year of action. There are white and black people in the group.

Austin Anarchist Black Cross

Check em out at the link above. I'm going to have to check it out. We have to act because alot of people out here sleepwalking though life not understanding that slavery is alive and well.

Do what you can to find abolitionist where you are. Also dont forget to check out New Abolitionists Radio New Abolitionists Radio – BLACK TALK RADIO NETWORK™ they do really good work at exposing prison slavery here in Amerikkka.

 

[Crude Abolitionist]

Found another one.

Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee

ATX Anarchist Black Cross

 

[Crude Abolitionist]

Here are some books that will be helpful I think when it comes to becoming a slavery abolitionist

I'm halfway done reading this. Can't lie I legit cried reading the second chapter about him being taken away from his grandmother. Its a tough read but its inspiring as fukk. So many parallels to what is going on now. Very disturbing.

This is on my to read list