Just one question. Why can't he take whatever was in the bag up with him when he enters the tower?
We don’t actually know it was food. It could have been toilet paper for all we know. I just know that it’s the standard practice in NY’s max prisons. We used to have an officers’ mess at Auburn. We’d go there on our breaks and when the inmates were all locked in their cells before the lunch and supper run, we could get a hot meal or sandwich. They closed it down some time after I transferred out. Not everybody packed a lunch. When I worked at mediums, I used to stop and pick up a sandwich or salad on my way to work, but sometimes we’d order out from a pizza/sub shop. The stuff would be delivered to the prison, and the roundsman would drop the food off at various points around the prison. If you ended up getting stuck at the prison for an extra 8 hours, you were SOL for food for the shift.