https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/03/08/food-business-michigan-prison-mississippi
The Big Business of Bad Prison Food
"According to one market analysis, the industry was worth almost $3.2 billion in 2022 in the United States alone, and is forecasted to keep growing."
By Beth Schwartzapfel
Republish
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There's also not enough food. A 2020 study by the criminal justice reform advocacy group Impact Justice found that 94% of incarcerated people surveyed said they did not receive enough food to feel full. More than 60% said they rarely or never had access to fresh vegetables. With the average wage paid to incarcerated workers maxing out at well under a dollar an hour and commissary prices rising, the food served in the chow hall is often people's only sustenance. Meager portions have left desperate people eating toothpaste and toilet paper, as my colleague Alysia Santo reported. Prison officials say hunger has led to unrest and a riot.
"Our menu is enough to keep us alive, I suppose, but never enough to supply and satisfy the appetites of grown men," David DeLena, incarcerated at a state prison in California, told me in 2022. Most states spend less than $3 per person per day on prison food -- and some as little as $1.02 -- according to the analysis by Impact Justice. Even Maine, widely seen as a model for providing good quality food in its prisons, only spends $4.05 per person, per day. By contrast, the Food and Drug Administration's "thrifty plan" estimates that feeding an adult man "a nutritious, practical, cost-effective diet" costs about $10 per day.
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Part of the problem, critics say, is a conflict of interest: All three of the major private food providers also have a stake in the booming prison commissary business, where incarcerated people can buy staples like ramen, tuna and coffee, as well as chips, cookies and other snacks. In 2022, Aramark bought the commissary company Union Supply Group. Summit Correctional Services includes both food services and a commissary arm. Trinity is owned by the same private equity firm as Keefe, one of the dominant commissary companies. A Detroit Free Press columnist asked whether the Trinity-Keefe merger was "a motive to serve yucky meals?" Poor food served in the chow hall drives hungry prisoners to the commissary, which only adds to the companies' bottom lines, Croft, the Mississippi lawyer, told me. "Crappy food is being paid for twice. And then the state is paying for the medical care on that," she said.
Another problem is that there's no such thing as a surprise kitchen inspection at a prison. Because of security precautions, health departments have to arrange inspections in advance. In sworn testimonies, people in prison describe manic cleaning sprees in advance of inspectors' visits. Even when violations are found, inspectors are generally reluctant to shut down the kitchens, as they would a restaurant. How else would incarcerated people eat? One inspection report in a New Mexico prison found mice droppings and "Blood and milk on the floor in walk-in cooler" -- yet the kitchen was still "approved."
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"They aren't asking for five-star meals," one attorney said, "They're just asking for food that's edible and that can keep them alive ..."
Feed 'em all those T%ump Steaks hidden in a deep freeze somewhere.