Simply put, typical prison meals have long constituted cruel and unusual punishment. With October 2000's good news that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons will provide healthy vegan options at every meal at all federal prisons, that's about to change.
This progress comes just weeks after the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed an affidavit to support the lawsuit by Keith Maydak, an inmate at Pennsylvania's Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary trying to ensure that he and other prisoners could get such meals. In May 2000, a federal judge encouragingly ruled that Mr. Maydak's lawsuit is "substantially likely to succeed."
Surely, only the most vindictive would force prisoners onto bread and water. However, most current fare is actually worse, both for the long-term health of inmates and society.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio feeds inmates donated bologna sandwiches and ham. Some Maryland inmates make processed meats such as beef patties, stew meats, and turkey loaf. In Iqualuit, Nunavat, Canada, Inuit inmates undertake hunting expeditions. Prisoners don't just do time, they do cholesterol.
Enough already. The time is right to dramatically improve prison meals by taking meat off the menus: in with the bean burritos, out with the beef burgers. That could shrink prison budgets, prisoner waistlines, and some prisoners' violent tendencies. Who would argue against that?
Recently, Sheriff Michael Hennessey had the San Francisco Jail join county jails in Oregon and jails and prisons in the Atlanta area by regularly serving vegan meals. He did so after receiving hundreds of letters and e-mails from concerned doctors, dietitians, and activists worldwide, to accommodate the ethical beliefs of vegan then-inmate Gerard "Jerry" Livernois.
As of mid-1998, the United States incarcerated a staggering 1.8 million people, double the number from 12 years earlier, according to the U.S. Justice Department. At three meals per day, that's more than 1.9 billion meals served annually. With more inmates, reducing costs counts more than ever. Switching from a meat-based diet to a health-promoting vegan menu can save lots of money.
Consider the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the second-largest U.S. prison system, which serves state inmates VitaPro, a vitamin-rich, texturized, soy-based, meat-flavored alternative from Montreal. Texas prisons cut weekly meat consumption by 70,000 pounds, a 50-percent reduction. (Some federal prisons also serve this alternative to beef and chicken.) Texas reports a 43-percent cost savings over meat, and inmate reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. As an added bonus, vegan meals can easily satisfy requirements for such special health concerns as diabetes. And VitaPro products are kosher and halal, meeting religious needs.
On New York City's 10-jail Rikers Island, some of the 16,000 inmates tend gardens that in 1998 produced 30,000 pounds of fresh vegetables, worth more than $8,100—and bestowed psychological benefits as well as practical skills—with virtually no trouble reported. It's an experiment being tried in too few places.
Besides saving money, vegan diets also mean healthier inmates, decreasing hospital and infirmary expenses. Vegan diets cut the risk of heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, some cancers, and other chronic illnesses. (According to a 1995 PCRM study published in the journal Preventive Medicine, meat consumption may cause $61 billion annually in direct U.S. health care costs for just seven disease groups.)
Other practical reasons support dropping animal products from prison menus.
The surge of U.S. school and workplace shootings has again spotlighted societal violence. Most people, rightly horrified, ask "Why?" And discovering what causes horrendous behavior certainly has value. But often overlooked is how to transform the violent-oriented portion of the current prison population—almost all of whom will eventually rejoin society.
Medical research links consumption of meat (and sugar) to aggravated mood swings and violent outbreaks among prisoners. In 1992, a study in the British medical journal The Lancet linked men's blood-serum triglyceride levels (raised by meat-eating) to hostile acts and domineering attitudes. By contrast, results from the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, published in 1991 in Psychosomatic Medicine, indicate hormone changes coming from plant-based diets can check aggressive tendencies.
Such findings suggest plant-food diets not only lessen health problems, but also can foster safer prisons. Furthermore, many vegetarian inmates ethically object to eating animal products.
Reducing violence, improving inmate health, and saving money are all important goals. Making prison menus vegan can further those ends and help bring about a more peaceful society for all.
A few years ago there was a riot at the Memphis Federal prison. They destroyed MILLIONS of dollars in government property including the musical instruments we provided them.
WE the TaxSerfs had to replace them at $2,500 per month so they wouldn't have to go out to bids. We bought them mandolins, guitar strings, a piano, mike stands, etc. Took several months for the order to be completed so as not to bump the bid thing.
Before gov taxquist became governor the death row inmates had ALL their meals catered from a high class hotel in Nashville. That is the only thing he's done right as gov is to stop it and sign one death warrant on a child killer.