Inmate Protest Poster; Drawing of an inmate eating a bite of food with the words "If you think NUTRALOAF is CRUEL and UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT, Wait until you try the BRUSSELS SPROUT CRUMBLE. For Dessert." Ruby, Jeff. “Dining Critic Tries Nutraloaf, the Prison Food for Misbehaving Inmates.” Chicago Magazine, 26 Aug. 2010, www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/september-2010/dining-critic-tries-nutraloaf-the-prison-food-for-misbehaving-inmates/.
“Prison Strike Organizers to Protest Food Giant Aramark.” Jan. 2017. Brown tray of food containing one slice of bread with a slice of processed ham on top. Bottom left of tray contains mixed vegetables.
Reid v. Nassau Cnty. Sheriff's Dep't Lawsuit Snippet; Case-Law VLEX. Reid v. Nassau Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t. 20 Aug. 2014.
Inmate Protest Poster; Drawing of an inmate eating a bite of food with the words "If you think NUTRALOAF is CRUEL and UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT, Wait until you try the BRUSSELS SPROUT CRUMBLE. For Dessert." Ruby, Jeff. “Dining Critic Tries Nutraloaf, the Prison Food for Misbehaving Inmates.” Chicago Magazine, 26 Aug. 2010, www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/september-2010/dining-critic-tries-nutraloaf-the-prison-food-for-misbehaving-inmates/.
PRISON "FOOD" AND ILLNESS
The prison system in the United States is often under scrutiny, and over the last decade, we’ve seen an increase in reports concerning food-borne illnesses, poor sanitary conditions, and standard of treatment.
Aramark, one of the leading food suppliers in the country, amongst others like Trinity and Summit Food, serve a wide variety of customers, ranging from K-12 and universities to state prisons and corporations. These same companies have also faced dozens of controversies over the last decade, including, but not limited to, maggot and rodent infestations, underreporting calories in food, and foodborne illness contamination.
One firsthand testimonial from an inmate in Indiana states that meals that were marketed as hot were rarely so and were sometimes even still frozen. Aramark also consistently failed to reach the FDA recommended serving allowances or the federally mandated calorie count constitutionally. A different inmate at another facility stated that a rat from a known infestation fell into stew and was served to others.
Studies conducted by the CDC and Marlow suggest that inmates suffer a disproportionate number of outbreak-associated foodborne illnesses, many of these cases being preventable simply by improving food and health oversight within these facilities. Marlow notes that between the years of 1998 and 2014, prison food-illnesses and outbreaks accounted for 6% of the total number in the United States. Over 20,000 cases in a pool of 358,000.
It is often extremely difficult to find data regarding patient care within correctional facilities as there is no standardized data collection or enforcement of legislation and constitutional rights in many prisons in the United States. When prisons are investigated, results are often bleak, with an investigation into Fulton County Jail by the Department of Justice reporting that over 90% of inmates in the mental health unit were “malnourished with obvious muscle wasting.”
The nonprofit, The Vera, states that legislation and litigation, while important, may not be the best focus and that legal accountability may be more important as many private food providers assume wrongdoing and risk continuing saving money for prisons over the long run. Others argue that the public prison system should reabsorb many of the functions currently outsourced to private companies as tax dollars saved within the institution are often spent anyways on the outside, whether through treatment inmates never received or recidivism. The buck saved is just spent another day.
Citations:
Coll, Steve. “The Jail Health-Care Crisis.” The New Yorker, 25 Feb. 2019, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/04/the-jail-health-care-crisis.
Hailer, Britanny. “New Cuyahoga County Jail Food Vendor Has History of Complaints.” Signal Cleveland, 9 Dec. 2024, signalcleveland.org/new-food-vendor-for-cuyahoga-county-jail-has-history-of-complaints-investigations/.
Investigate. “Aramark.” Aramark | AFSC Investigate, 12 July 2024, investigate.afsc.org/company/aramark.
Jones, Griffin. “Aramark: Multibillion Dollar Food Vendor Starves and Exploits Prisoners.” San Francisco Bay View, 18 Oct. 2019, sfbayview.com/2019/10/aramark-multibillion-dollar-food-vendor-starves-and-exploits-prisoners/.
Kaitlin Durbin, cleveland.com. “Summit Food Service Will Take over Preparing Meals in Cuyahoga County Jail.” Cleveland, 27 Nov. 2024, www.cleveland.com/news/2024/11/summit-food-service-will-take-over-preparing-meals-in-cuyahoga-county-jail.html.
Kelkar, Kamala. “Prison Strike Organizers to Protest Food Giant Aramark.” Indybay, 8 Jan. 2017, www.indybay.org/newsitems/2017/01/08/18795223.php.
Lyon, Ed. “Trinity Services Group Faces Complaints Due to Inadequate Prison and Jail Food.” Prison Legal News, 8 June 2018, www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/jun/8/trinity-services-group-faces-complaints-due-inadequate-prison-and-jail-food/.
Marlow, Mariel A et al. “Foodborne Disease Outbreaks in Correctional Institutions-United States, 1998-2014.” American journal of public health vol. 107,7 (2017): 1150-1156. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2017.303816
Pluta, Rick. “Snyder: Prison Food Contract Troubles Are ‘Unacceptable.’” WKAR Public Media, WKAR, 1 July 2014, www.wkar.org/newsroom/2014-07-01/snyder-prison-food-contract-troubles-are-unacceptable.
Slavinski, Justin. “Meet the Company Getting Rich off My Prison’s Awful Food.” Prison Journalism Project, 31 Oct. 2023, prisonjournalismproject.org/2023/09/10/getting-rich-providing-awful-prison-food/.