ATLANTA (AP) - The recession is hitting home for inmates, too: Some cash-strapped states are taking aim at prison menus.
Georgia prisoners already didn't get lunch on the weekends, and the Department of Corrections recently eliminated the midday meal on Fridays, too. Ohio may drop weekend breakfasts and offer brunch instead. Other states are cutting back on milk and fresh fruit.
Officials say prisoners are still getting enough calories, but family members and critics say the changes could make prisoners irritable and food a valuable commodity, increasing the possibility of violence.
In Georgia, inmates are still getting the same number of daily calories: 2,800 for men and 2,300 for women. The portions at breakfast and dinner are bigger on days only two meals are served.
Almost 5 percent of the state's 58,295 prisoners still get three meals every day because they are diabetic, pregnant or have other special health needs.
Barbara Helie, whose 25-year-old son Nicholas is serving time for armed robbery in Valdosta State Prison, said he would go hungry without the roughly $60 a week she puts into his account to buy instant soups, cheese, beef sticks and other snacks at the prison commissary.
"I don't know how the guys who don't have someone on the outside helping out handle it," Helie said. "Food has been an ongoing issue for him ... He's hungry a lot."
Georgia's fast-growing prison system - the fifth-largest in the nation - has been hit hard by the same budget woes plaguing other states. For the current fiscal year, the state has slashed almost 10 percent from the state Department of Corrections' $1.1 billion budget.
Friday lunches were a casualty of the department's decision to save money on gas and other costs by scaling back the prisoner work week from five eight-hour days to four 10-hour days, said Calvin Brown, Georgia Department of Corrections Deputy Director of Facility Operations. He couldn't say how much the state is saving.
For years now, Georgia prisoners have received only two meals a day on weekends because they don't work, so now the same holds true on Fridays. They get three meals on work days because they are exerting themselves on road crews and litter pick up.
There are no federal minimum caloric standards for state prison systems, though they are encouraged to adhere to guidelines established by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies Food and Nutrition Board. Georgia officials say they follow those guidelines, and Brown said there have been some complaints from inmates and family members but no lawsuits.
In Ohio, prisons director Terry Collins said eliminating breakfast on the weekends and replacing it with brunch "could save us some real dollars when it comes to staffing and food costs."
He said the move would not upset prisoners because it would not sacrifice quality.
"I don't expect them to be as good as mom's home cooking, but the food should be cooked and presented properly," Collins said.
Other states have kept three meals but are scaling back menus. Earlier this month, Alabama reduced the milk and fresh fruit it serves to save $700,000. Alabama inmates now receive an apple or an orange once a week, down from twice a week. Milk has been reduced from seven servings per week to three. Tennessee has also cut back on milk portions for men - from two servings a day to one - to save $600,000.
Gordon Crews, a professor at Marshall University in West Virginia, wrote a book looking at correctional violence and said historically there have been links between food and problems behind bars. He pointed to a February riot at the Reeves County Detention Center in Texas caused in part by poor food quality.
"A lot of prisoners will see something like that as some kind of retribution against them or some kind of mistreatment," Crews said. "It'll be something that the correctional staff will pay the price for ... another reason (for inmates) to argue and fight back."
In Georgia, reports of inmate assaults - on both staff and other inmates - are up substantially for fiscal year 2009 over the year before, according to data obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request.
Prison officials deny the increase has anything to do with the shrinking menu but didn't provide an explanation.
Sara Totonchi, of the Southern Center for Human Rights, called the elimination of Friday lunch part of a troubling trend of budget cuts in Georgia's correctional system.
"We don't think this is a good idea," she said. "It destabilizes things inside the prison and that is not good for any of the inmates or staff."
EDWIN L. CROTTY, supervisor of farm operations for the state's Department of Corrections, says he is doing what every farmer dreams of: getting a double harvest.
Mr. Crotty, who oversees the department's 17 prison farms, meat-packing plant and yogurt factory, is responsible for the production of $5 million of agricultural products a year. The farms, he says, teach 400 inmates a work ethic that helps them hold jobs when they are released.
Prison farm products are sold mainly to the Corrections and Human Services Departments for 85 percent of wholesale market value. They are used to feed the 17,000 prison inmates and 6,000 people in institutions for the mentally ill and retarded, with surpluses marketed outside.
Prison farms total 9,000 acres. They produce 750 gallons of yogurt and $40,000 worth of meat products a week, as well as 25,000 pheasants a year for restocking hunting areas, and, according to Mr. Crotty, supply 80 percent of the dairy products, all the pork and 35 percent of the other meats bought by the two departments.
Anne Arrington, consulting dietician for the Department of Corrections, maintains that the state farm system helps her enrich the prison diet.
''We are not forced to buy from the state farm system,'' Ms. Arrington said in an interview, ''but we get a much better deal from Ed. For instance, he sells us fruited yogurt for 15 cents a cup. We could never buy it on the outside for that price.
''The meat from Ed's meat-processing plant is very popular. I think the key is that he tries to work with us, to find out what we need, and then provides high-quality products tailored to our needs and on time.''
When he was hired in 1977, Mr. Crotty said, the farms were producing $800,000 of poor-quality food and losing $1 million a year. Now, he says, they cover all their own expenses, including the salaries of civilian supervisors and of inmates, who earn $1.85 to $5.10 a day.
This year, the farms are expected to earn a $150,000 profit, which will be plowed back into building improvements and machinery.
''If we consider the fact that we are selling our product to the state for 85 percent of its real value,'' Mr. Crotty said, ''you could say that we are making a large profit for the state because we are saving the institutions $850,000 a year.''
Prison farm products are inspected by the Federal Department of Agriculture. Every product leaving the correctional farms bears the slogan ''Better Than It Has to Be.''
Although the Corrections Department has no data on the recidivism of inmates who work on the farms, Mr. Crotty believes it is far lower than that of the general prison population.
''Working with animals changes the inmates,'' Mr. Crotty said. ''They realize very quickly that the cows are totally dependent on them, and so they learn a sense of responsibility. It's like the studies that showed that old people who have pets remain healthier.''
When inmates leave, he said, ''they have a totally different attitude toward getting up and going to work.''
This was confirmed by 20-year-old John Loftin, a milker at the Skillman farm, who is serving a five-year sentence for possession of cocaine.
Before he was arrested last November, he said, ''I had never held a job.''
''When I came to the farm, I hated getting up at 4:45 A.M. to start work,'' Mr. Loftin said. ''Now I'm used to it and I regard my arrest as a blessing. Working here is teaching me how to take care of myself on the outside.''
Under farm system rules, anyone caught abusing animals or fighting is sent back to a regular prison. According to Mr. Crotty, in his 10 years as farm operations supervisor, he has sent back only two inmates.
Many inmates say the farm rules have changed them by giving them something to lose.
''We are forced to respect each other,'' said Andre D. Lopez, 23, a cow feeder at Skillman, who is serving seven years for selling cocaine.
''You have to hold your temper and talk, rather than 'duking it out' in the street. And when there is an argument, someone always has to back down, because nobody wants to get sent back to a prison cell.''
According to Mr. Crotty, the state farm system has earned the respect of corrections departments throughout the country and has been visited by officials from 30 other states.
Mr. Crotty believes that the state farm system must be expanded to help meet the demand for more prison space.
''We have to provide inmates with meaningful work if we want to reform them,'' he said. ''And farm work is just that, because they can make things grow and see their own accomplishments. This is a real boost to their self-esteem.''
There is a very simple solution: Decriminalize Drugs.
That would cut the prison population by over 50% in 18 months.
Thus it would cut costs by at least the same amount.
Of course since the fat cats are getting more filthy lucre from the Drug Trade which they profit from they won't do it.
So, again this is a form of corporate welfare for very very wealthy criminals - and the largest drug operation in America - the CIA.
"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated." Bertrand Russel, Eugenicist and Logician