Since I returned home, people thought being a federal prison meant I was eating well. That's about as funny as people thinking Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution had air conditioning in our cells.
When I first got to Fort Dix, there were these sausages - think kielbasa - that were pretty good, except for the bone chips that were dangerous to teeth and digestion. They finally got rid of them, probably too expensive.
We had chicken quarters Tuesdays and Thursdays, but they discontinued the quarters for Tuesday after a few years. The chicken tended to often be pink close to the bone. This bothered some people, but I thought it had been steamed enough to be safe. It certainly had killed the taste. Other than the occasional bird with pin feathers intact, it was tolerable. Most people thought they would never eat chicken again. I can tell you chicken tastes nothing on the outside, it has almost wiped away all the bad memories of prison chicken.
Oddly, one thing they did well was liver and onions. That got ditched after my first year, if my memory is correct.
Eggs were the one thing I despised - I think they had to use liquid eggs or some such substitute. Again, eggs out here taste nothing like they did in prison.
The word was that local restaurants donated food. I think that is how we got turkey burgers. They were a welcome change, until they tasted of freezer burn.
Then there was the time someone stored garlic or onions with the skim milk. Garlic infused milk was served for weeks.
Anyway, what I read this morning in Food In Federal Prisons Isn't Just Bad, Sometimes It's Dangerous — Here's Why Read More (The Takeout) reminded me of all that.
You'd be naive to think that food in federal or state prison is up to par with a gourmet meal by Bobby Flay. Honestly, you'd be naive to think the food is even slightly enjoyable. Food in prison is used to further punish inmates, lacking both nutrition and basic moral decency. Cell phone images smuggled out of American correctional facilities showcase the food being served in chow halls barely looks edible. This presents a slew of health risks for incarcerated individuals.
In 2020, Impact Justice conducted a study of food in American prisons. The study produced many unfortunate statistics, like 62% of inmates stating they rarely (if ever) were given fresh vegetables and 94% saying they did not receive enough food to feel full. The report additionally found that, on average, American prisons spend $3 per day on food per inmate. The food prisoners did receive was of the poorest quality. A 2021 federal lawsuit from Mississippi alleged food was "spoiled, rotten, molded, or uncooked" and contaminated with rat, bird, and insect feces. Shockingly, formerly incarcerated individuals reported seeing "not for human consumption" labels on food boxes. These boxes contained "chicken" as well as "deli meats" such as bologna, ham, and salami.
I never saw the boxes marked not for human consumption, but I heard of them.
The article mentions the commissary:
Prisoners gather food from the life preserver that is the commissary (aka the canteen). The commissary offers food to prisoners we on the outside would purchase in grocery stores — think ramen, snack cakes, and chips. Because inmates make less than $1 per hour, unless you have support from the outside the commissary is often unattainable. Even if one is able to purchase a pack of ramen noodles, a typical bowl of ramen comes with over 1,500 grams of sodium, which only exacerbates the rampant health issues found in correctional facilities. Nevertheless, the Prison Policy Initiative found that inmates spend $947 per year at the commissary. Prison food suppliers, like Aramark, supply both chow hall food and commissary food across multiple prisons, thus incentivizing the suppliers to drive commissary sales by providing low-quality food elsewhere.
We did not have food from Aramark, but from vendors who marketed to the federal prisons. I have forgotten the names now; it was assumed the vendors were politically connected.
Relying on the commissary was called "eating out of your locker". I did not, but plenty of others did. It was a sign that you had more money than others. The hooch makers, the ones running the gambling, the ones selling tobacco or drugs, the organized crime types did this as well as those with money on the outside, or with friends and family who sent them money. I did not do this. Most of my roommates assigned this to me being crazy. I was not going to let my family and friends subsidize the federal government,
The article is correct about how little bought at the commissary was healthy.
Unmentioned is how the BOP used commissary to punish unit buildings.
The article mentions prison cookbooks.
Prison cookbooks have burgeoned from intrigue about prison life. Popular prison cookbooks include Albert "Prodigy" Johnson's "Commissary Kitchen" and Wisconsin Books to Prisoners' "Canteen Cuisine." Although written by different people who shared different experiences behind bars, these books display creativity at its finest and how food persists as a source of light in the darkest of places.
The links in the above paragraph did not translate, so here goes Commissary Kitchen Paperback – October 11, 2016, and What Martha Stewart Thought About The Food In Prison.
There was ingenuity in cooking in prison. The Puerto Ricans made a rice dish in cut down pickle buckets (the buckets stolen from the mess hall) in our unit microwaves. I had pizzas and cakes made the same way. If I recall correctly, Fort Dix let the microwaves breakdown without putting in replacements. This eliminated the cooking in the unit buildings, a source of income for many. By the time COVID shutdown trips to the mess hall, what we were left with was the hot water supply. It was good enough for ramen noodles and coffee.
Some of the bright boys in another unit building thought they could do a hunger strike over conditions Now, the United States Bureau of Prisons has made their operations as secretive as any Soviet Gulag. Maybe more so, no general media outlet takes an interest in the federal prisons. What Fort Dix did was empty the unit building and send them elsewhere. The conditions did not change.
What I noticed was that mess hall depended on it not having to feed all the inmates. Even at the best of times, if your unit was the last to the mess hall (and there was an order in how the units were released to meals), there would be empty pans (of beans, rice, oatmeal - depending on the meal) at the steam tables. Then one month, the prison had banned most units from commissary, then it was closed for inventory. Food service collapsed. The word coming out of prisoners working food service was that the guards running food service begged for commissary to be reopened.
We also lost a lot of fresh fruit because people were making hooch. Hundred of gallons, in more than one unit building.
Any vegetables were canned, not fresh. And cooked well-nigh to mush.
I close with give you a link to the national menu for the Bureau of Prisons. I will make two notes:
- Not every prison follows this menu
- Understand that if you see something like fajitas or having a foreign name, it is not what you think, but it is there to make you think better of what the federal government feeds its inmates.
I recall the fajitas as mostly onions and green pepper with bits of tough meat; not what you will get at Applebee's. They did a lo mein that was boiled, greasy turkey meat tossed into spaghetti; it would have gotten a good laugh from anyone knowing lo mein.
The BOP National Menu
I have written far more than I expected. Maybe there is more resentment in me than I have acknowledged, or I am acting out a delusion. What delusion? That any American reading this will care what they are doing to their prison's inmates. You probably think we deserved to be treated this way. However, answer this: what do you get if you treat people like animals instead of human beings?
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