A, ah, acquaintance of mine can verify the general quality and quantity of the food depicted in this article via a month of work-release at the county jail in the Midwest. He was lucky in that work-release people could not only get whatever meals they could manage at or through work, but could also get soft drinks and snacks from a vending machine, at regular vending machine prices, instead of the extortionate prices charged by the commissary. They could even order in delivery food on Friday and Saturday nights. They would have to eat the jail food, though, if they were stuck there on the weekends or didn’t have enough money for the vending machines or pizza, and it was the most depressing crap that Sysco or whoever had the contract could dredge up, and was an effective way of keeping order–the punishment for just about any infraction of the many, many rules in work release was going to real jail, and you knew that you would have to live on that shit or pay commissary prices. Best thing available was the baloney and ham salad sandwiches that work release prisoners got as a bag lunch.
Probably true, and according to the article, a sheriff caught skimming the food budget admitted that he “could double the food portions served to inmates… without significantly increasing his food expenditures.” That’'s also probably true for most places. But one thing that never ceases to be true in the general sense is the American public’s vindictiveness regarding prisoner treatment. A great example of this is how politicians used to whip up the rubes, er, voters by talking about how prisoners in some institutions got color TVs; they kept this up even after you couldn’t buy a black-and-white TV in stores, which meant that the last places that were a market for B&W sets were prisons, and if you think that they didn’t have to pay a premium for that, ha ha, very funny. Joe Arpaio keeps getting re-elected by finding new ways to be petty toward prisoners.
