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Recession Hits Prisons – Meals, Menus Slashed

  • Spence Cooper
  • June 8, 2009
Prison Bars
Even Prison Kitchens Feel the Recession

As states across the nation are hit hard by declining tax revenues, massive budget deficits, and jettisoned government programs, the recession has penetrated the steel bars and thick concrete walls of prisons and chiseled away at kitchen budgets.

To cope with state budget shortfalls, some prisons have eliminated either lunch on weekends and Fridays, or breakfast served on weekends. Other states are cutting back on milk and fresh fruit.

“I don’t know how the guys who don’t have someone on the outside helping out handle it,” said Barbara Helie, who –reports AP– subsidizes her son’s diet at Valdosta State Prison with $60 a week to buy prison snacks. “Food has been an ongoing issue for him ….”

“Eliminating breakfast on the weekends and replacing it with brunch could save us some real dollars when it comes to staffing and food costs, said prisons director Terry Collins in Ohio. “I don’t expect them to be as good as mom’s home cooking, but the food should be cooked and presented properly,” Collins said.

Gordon Crews, a professor at Marshall University in West Virginia, and author of a book on correctional violence, claims there is a history and link between food and prison conflict. He cited “a February riot at the Reeves County Detention Center in Texas caused in part by poor food quality”.

“A lot of prisoners will see something like that as some kind of retribution against them or some kind of mistreatment,” said Crews. “It’ll be something that the correctional staff will pay the price for … another reason (for inmates) to argue and fight back.”

According to data obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request, reports of inmate assaults have increased substantially in Georgia for fiscal year 2009 over the year before.

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