Kentucky inmates hate prison food even more than they did before

In 2003, Kentucky inmates rated the food 5.84 on a scale of 1 to 10. By early 2009 -- after the food service was outsourced to a private firm -- that number had dropped to 3.24. The decline in inmate satisfaction was particularly steep at a facility where prisoners rioted and burned much of the complex this summer. Lexington Herald-Leader)

Comments

[oldewave]

This is a travesty! A CRIME! I DEMAND that they hire Paula Dean IMMEDIATELY to remedy this henious miscarriage of justice!!!

[RockyMtnMac]

Ohhhhh....That is too bad!
Inmate satisfaction is a high f*cking priority for me and the rest of the taxpayers.

[Dick Tater]

Tell the convicts if the food is not to their liking, they have the option to self-terminate by strolling down to the lethal injection chamber. No one will shed a tear. In fact, a great number of good citizens would volunteer to administer the drug cocktail.

[305club]

Yeah killings too good for 'em let's be real mean and see if we can get the recidivism rate into the 90's

[Reno]

As I head down to the company cafeteria I sympathize with these poor souls... lol.

[Reno]

Update - got Shrimp and Vegetable Primabela, with garlic bread and milk. Want some?

[outofsalt]

I once spent a month eating rice as my one meal a day--that was the only thing I could afford. If I could do that as a law-abiding person, maybe the criminals could do likewise. Afterwards, I'd guess that regular prison fare would not look too bad at all.

[LimeGreenLizard]

Given that most of these guys never went to a good restaurant when they were free, their highest tastes in food must be already as low as a baloney sandwich.

Just send them to my ocean planet and close the prison. I have a nice Island they can live on. Lots of seagulls, guano, rats and whatever they can scrounge from the sea. They’ll have to dig their own caves to sleep in, of course. No trees on that island big enough make a shack with, much less a boat to escape. And they can just manage themselves. No TV’s, flush toilets, toilet paper, and absolutely no women. I like to consider it a human experiment. Still working out the finer details…

[Kathy Robles]

Well at least they get fed and have medical care which is more than many people on this Earth can say. Do they not know why they are in prison? BAD CHOICES! Oh, well, BOO HOO!

[Torgo]

What a bloodthirsty bunch we Americans are.

[Navy Chief]

I still think that sheriff in AZ has the right idea...

[johnjohn]

Actually the sad truth is that as tax payers you are all being ripped off. You are charged for one thing and a substandard substitute is delivered.

Having been on the "guest" end of a jail or two (never prison and oddly, never any charges, just Texas Sheriff hospitality) I can tell you it is a money making operation for corporations, municipalites (counties) and crooked wardens.

If we put them into prison, we have a duty to properly care for them. This is not a liberal view, it would be the 'Christian' view.

[Somebody]

Rancid food? Score one for privatization! I'm absolutely shocked to see the gov't get ripped off by private enterprise. I mean who would think a profit motive might trump actually providing a service? Privatization is just more neo-con crap.

[Alligator]

In England the prisoners would win a lawsuit, get better food than most people and be awarded damages for emotional duress.

[Alligator]

Don't worry, orange suit boys, Obama's gonna hold your hand and wipe your eyes and serve up up good eats soon.

[305club]

Now I'm not a big prisoner rights kind of guy but isn't the "make prison a criminal trade school" thing not working? It costs somewhere between 30-50k a year to house one inmate. In spite of my pro death stance life in prision is still cheaper than execution. A lot of our prison population is from mandatory drug sentencing laws. Sure we have to get these folks off the streets but wouldn't we really want them to come out as reformed citizens? I don't want to buy 'em a coke I'm just saying.

[Charles]

Firstly, not everyone in any particular prison actually did anything to deserve it. Courts are human, and make errors.

Second, unwholesome and unhealthy food is NOT a punishment, it is an abuse. Just as much as overcrowding, beatings, rapes and murder, as just as illegal.

Any one of us through no fault of our own could find ourselves in their shoes in a very short time, so it's entirely in our own selfish interest that prisons are humane.

[USMerc]

If all prisons had rancid food, no tv's, no internet, or any of the other benefits that a lot of law abiding citizens can't afford, maybe these convicts wouldn't be in such a damned hurry to end up back there!

[FatSean]

Since the death penalty isn't a deterrent, poor prison living conditions won't be either.

The worse you make prison, the greater the ends to which a man will go to avoid prison. Including killing to help cover his tracks. Maybe just shooting you in the back of the head to make sure you don't pull a gun on him before he robs the store.

Punishment isn't working, how about we try rehabilitation?

[Kee]

I LOVE Sheriff Joe! No free ride for inmates, and no one ever wants to return to county jail. Three meals a day is too expensive so he switched to two meals a day and one is a baloney sandwich. (He eats the food to prove its edible.) The county can’t afford to expand jails so he had inmate in tents. Inmates stole underwear when they left so he had them dyed pink! Joe still operates chain gangs to clean up public land. I LOVE Sheriff Joe!

[johnjohn]

Sheriff Joe has also done something most folks thought impossible. He makes Texas' LEOs look like ACLU lawyers.

[USMerc]

FatSean-Who says the death penalty isn't a deterrent? I beg to differ...Once you flip the switch or inject some scumbag--PRESTO!!! That SOB will NEVER hurt anyone again!!!

[Phranqlin]

A few points:

1. I'm with johnjohn and FatSean about treating inmates humanely, and that includes serving them decent food.

2. The prisoners weren't exactly swilling caviar and champagne before their food service was privatized.

3. If guys who grew up eating Doritos, mayonnaise sandwiches, McDonalds, and similar crap think that privatized food is bad, it must be pretty awful.

4. Bad food may not have started the riot, but it almost certainly contributed to the grievances that fueled it. It's cheaper to serve the inmates decent food than it is to pay for a riot.

5. The food service contractor is lowering its costs by shorting inmates on portions and serving cheap, bad food, then pocketing the difference. Sounds like the state would get more bang for its food buck by cooking its own because it doesn't have to squeeze a profit out of every meal.

[amy]

Wahhhh Your in prison dumb arse.. What do you expect a 5 star meal... Get real... Dont do the crime then dont do the time.

[Navy Chief]

Charles, et al: Humane does not necessarily mean comfortable.

[sometimesilie]

"5. The food service contractor is lowering its costs by shorting inmates on portions and serving cheap, bad food, then pocketing the difference. Sounds like the state would get more bang for its food buck by cooking its own because it doesn't have to squeeze a profit out of every meal."

That's just it. I'd bet a steak dinner that they're not saving the taxpayers money by lowering the costs; they're taking the same money, providing crappier food, and pocketing the difference.

[sometimesilie]

That's right, navy chief. You can feed a lot of people on a sack of rice, beans, corn, tuna helper, ramen, whatever. I've done it myself in college. Cheap.

It sounds like the food they're feeding these guys is rotten, not 'cheap'.

[FatSean]

USMerc - Guess you don't understand the meaning of 'deterrant' in this context. For years many right-wingers claimed that the death penalty would discourage people from committing a crime. Years later, that idea turned out to be as false as the psychologists claimed it was.

Bad conditions just breeds contempt for society. Have you noticed that more and more judges and prosecutors are being killed? That's the backlash IMO.

[FatSean]

People don't think about prison/death consequences before they commit the crime. They do consider them after the crime is commited, the emotions have faded, and it's time to CYA.

[Somebody]

Even a majority of police chiefs across the nation don't believe the death penalty is a deterrent.

Also, I can understand why people want criminals to not be mollycoddled (altho, I think providing food that isn't rancid, isn't mollycoddling), but I can't understand why people would think it's okay that some private enterprise with a gov't contract is entitled to not provide what they are paid for.

[anon]

The death penalty might actually be a deterrent if it didnt take 20 - 30 years to carry through with it.

[Pandora]

Help control the prison population:
Have your convicts spayed or neutered

[Sigh]

The Constitution is your friend.

[dobie]

If food was rancid and not nourishing, shouldn't there be some health statistics that would back that claim up? Or if, as the caterer claims, inmates just don't like the healthier diet, then inmate illness should have gone down. It would be very easy to see if the food is making inmates ill or healthier than the previous system. If these are people used to eating crappy fast food, then a healthy meal just might not appeal to them. Fat, sugar, and salt are all yummy.

If this is just based on the prisoners not liking the food, I could give a rat's behind.

If there's an actual health issue, then they need to make some changes.

[ReginaFilangee]

I'm sure someone has said it already, but if the food in prison was rated a 3.24 by the prisoners who consume it, then that's too high. The standards should be lowered.

Prison is punishment. They've been tried and found guilty. It should be an unenjoyable....indeed an UNPLEASANT....experience, so that they won't want to go back and will therefore (hopefully) stay on the right side of the law once they get out.

I'm not talking about lowering nutritional content, as nourishment is a basic responsibility to provide to any captive. I'm just talking about lowering the palatability of the food. As long as it's nourishment, it doesn't have to taste good. They're not there to be catered to.

[ReginaFilangee]

"Since the death penalty isn't a deterrent, poor prison living conditions won't be either."

I also beg to differ on that, FatSean. The ONLY reason it's "not" a deterrent is that it isn't really imposed. Because even when that is the sentence, it's usually a decade or two later before it's carried out. Back in the days of courtyard hangings, it most certainly was a deterrent to crime.

[ReginaFilangee]

More than just a few law-abiding homeless people in this country do just fine on a diet obtained from a dumpster. It's not ideal (obviously)....but it sustains life. Just sayin.....

Personally, I would rather feed the law-abiding homeless better food, and let the prisoners have the dumpster fare. Going to prison is almost entirely a CHOICE, made the minute someone decides to commit (or doesn't stop oneself from committing) a crime. As the old saying goes, "reap what you sow."

(I'm not saying that wrongful convictions don't occur. That's what I meant by prison being "almost entirely" a choice.)

[thomas]

Our failing justice system has somehow allowed politics to have much more sway than prescribed in dealing with what is considered a criminal element.
Mandatory drug laws,,women's issues (domestic violence), probation violations aplenty for the aforementioned, and housing homeless and mentally infirm people have exploded the populations of jails and prisons.
World statistics tell us that more people are locked up in the US than any other country. Is that the mark of a forward thinking, wannabe democratic nation and example to the planet, or a catchall process that has gotten out of hand in the hope of keeping our citizens safe from one another??
Don't get me wrong, please. Dangerous individuals with a record of career criminality deserve segregation, even from their own, preferably on an inescapeable island with no guards. So many more are in need of constuctive assistance that will steer them back towards their better natures. Down the road, this makes more sense financially, socially, humanely, and as a nation that aspires to be a global example.
Despite our national sense of world superiority, we are still barely an adolescent nation of less than 400 years that condemns some permanently for urinating in public, brewing coffee indoors and naked, or making threatening crayon drawings in school. White collar ivy league crime goes largely tolerated, except for a few token busts. The drug business thrives, illegal or not.
Priorities are the issue, without the benefit of PR professionals and DC spinners, or the pet projects or cause celebre of influenced elected officials. Even when a few of these failed persons face incarceration, it's almost never the same circumstances Joe Plumber has to endure.
Rancid food, gross overcrowding, archaic laws, and a self perpetuating system IS abuse. It is also illegal.
It's so easy to comfortably and smugly include everyone behind bars as "getting what they deserve", when most here will never wear the mocassins of an inmate for even a short time, and experience the desperate drama of so many who would scream, "I'm in the wrong place, I don't deserve to be here".
Many are quite correct.

[gina]

My son in law is currently at a work release facility in Florida. One of the things he does is help unload the food trucks. He has told us the meat they use for preparing the meals is factory labeled "mechanically separated turkey parts, not fit for human consumption". I know for a fact (through news articles) that in that county the quality of food served to the inmates is horrible. I realize some people may feel it's a part of being a prisoner. But what those unenlightened folks don't realize is the great many inmates in county jails who are NOT convicted yet. I know people who have spent months in jail on trumped up charges, enduring worse conditions than in prisons, only to be either found not guilty at trial or the prosecutor drops the charges. Why should those not yet CONVICTED of a crime be treated that way?

[zimmer]

Hey it is not a hotel. They should be fed gruel. They are in prison not a holiday camp. As long as they are fed who care gruel I tell you....

[Michelle]

zimmer, until you learn how to (with proper spelling, grammar, etc) articulate what you think you might actually believe, shut up.

Having known many police and ex police, as well as working with criminals, I can tell you something. The best method of training a human to become worse is to treat them harshly. They become tougher, meaner. When they hit the streets again, their predatory instincts are honed like a razor. Our prisonor systems are largely a massive failure. We bring in convicts, make them worse, then send them back out onto our streets.

[MadScientistMatt]

Aramark ran the cafeterias at the college I went to. Let's just say the prisoners have my sympathy.

[Lots42]

Christian? What? Dude, not everyone is religous.

I agree, serve healthy stuff. If the inmates still whine, fark 'em.

[Charles]

But it's cheaper to keep them happy than clean up after a riot, where staff may be raped, brutalized or killed. This is why prisons were made humane in the first place.
Moreover, most prisoners are NOT lifers and eventually get out. You don't want them to leave with a serious grievance that could end up with police and civilians dead.
Thirdly, the percentage of Americans who see prison is still increasing, where will that end? In a wholesale Revolution? No, those in law enforcement need to find ways to reconcile the 10% of us who see jail with society before it blows up in their faces. And why is it that Americans are so much worse than other nations? I rather think it's our courts that are worse than those elsewhere.

[Charles]

We have more laws to protect the rights of incarcerated animals than we do to provide humane care for human beings. Americans are a disgrace to the ideals of their own country.