Yet Another American Human Rights Failure

 

 “For people who are incarcerated, the unhealthy, unappetizing, and often inedible food in prison robs them of dignity, humanity, and health.  Food in prison is being wielded as a further form of punishment – one linked with chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension. The adverse impacts of eating while incarcerated affect people long after their reentry into the community.”

From a 2020 Impact/Justice Report

All across the nation, from the bluest of the blue states to the reddest of the red states, prison and jail conditions are still well below humane standards, food is often rotten or otherwise inedible, frequently insufficient to sustain reasonable health. Staffing shortages and overcrowding have led most prisons, especially those housing male inmates, to segregation by gang affiliation, effectively relegating day-to-day management to gang leaders (so-called “shot callers”). But jail and prison food… well, it is often disgusting.

Even though most states and the federal government are taking steps to decriminalize many forms of drug possession and shorten sentences (or provide alternatives to incarceration), for a nation that represents a mere 4% of the world’s population, that we account for almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners is outrageous. That we spend somewhere between $20,000 and $100,000 in annual costs per inmate, depending on the venue, is colossal waste.

In my undergraduate days, as I focused on exploring and then writing about then contemporary prison conditions, I was able to secure open access to the prison floor (at a Delaware penitentiary) … at my own risk. What I recall to this day is a reality that escapes most prison documentaries and dramatic motion pictures/TV shows: the smells. Urine. Feces. And the horrible stench of prison food. This reality, combined with the hollow yet angry eyes that followed me everywhere, are permanent etched in my mind. Prisons have only become more crowded since then, and conditions have continued to deteriorate. These conditions exist in virtually every prison across the land. Jails, used for short-term incarceration (for unconvicted prisoners facing trial or those sentence to incarceration for less than a year), are often even worse.

For those in the richest communities in blue states, venues which decry human rights abuses around the globe, it might be shocking to learn the abusive conditions that define incarceration even in their own back yards. Orange County is Southern California is among the most economically advantaged communities in a wealthy region. So, when OC jail conditions reached unparallel depths of substandard food, the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times (on January 13th) took notice:

“It doesn’t matter whether you’ve ever set foot in jail, or even the county for that matter. Unhealthful, spoiled or otherwise inadequate food in jails is inhumane and degrades not just the people who have to eat it. It is the public’s responsibility to ensure that incarcerated people are not subject to this kind of mistreatment, which will have continuing health consequences.

“The bad food in Orange County jails includes bologna that ‘sometimes leaks a dark juice and is blotched with green spots,’ according to a report by a group that organized to oppose jail expansion. Jail occupants have described soggy bread, sour milk and food that is so awful that they have to decide between getting sick or going hungry. Some reported that deputies leave food trays on the floor for up to an hour before occupants are permitted to pick them up, and that by that time bugs have gotten to it…

“There have long been complaints about the food in Orange County jails. In fact, food in pretty much any county jail, where people stay for relatively short periods (a week or two, on average, in California), and state and federal prisons, where they may live for years and sometimes decades, is so notoriously bad that an entire culture has developed around making tastier alternatives from packaged snacks that can be purchased at commissaries or scrounged, with or without permission, from around the facilities.

“There are jailhouse cookbooks and YouTube videos by former and current residents who walk readers and viewers through the finer details of making cheesecake from coffee creamer . Or chi chi, a sort of junk food casserole, from ramen, various smashed chips and other things loaded with salt and sugar.

“In Orange County, hot meals were suspended at the beginning of the pandemic for what the Sheriff’s Department said were reasons of health and safety. In the wake of the coalition’s report, the department denied many of the assertions and said hot meals had resumed.

“Tradition tells us that inmates were once fed nothing but bread and water. Some might find it difficult to sympathize with people who are fed moldy sandwiches, and wonder, ‘Isn’t jail a place of punishment rather than luxury, and don’t we want people to have an additional incentive to stay out of trouble?’

“But in most California jails, more than half, on average, of residents are there pretrial, meaning they have not been convicted of anything. They’re often held only because they have no money for bail… Even in prisons, where the residents have been convicted and are serving sentences, punishment should not include a willful attack on their bodies and spirits with bad or dangerous food. That’s no recipe for rehabilitation, and is poor preparation for rejoining communities upon release.” Inmates have sufficiently horrible conditions no matter how you look at their realities, both while serving time and trying to fit back into society upon release. There is no justification for these conditions, and particularly the indignity of rotten and inedible food over which inmates have little control.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it you think these harsh conditions are merited, just remember that a lot of really angry individuals are released every day… each remembering what society did to them.