An anonymous South Dakota prison guard tells KSFY’s Beth Warden what South Dakota Penitentiary lifer Shane Bell told us in 2019—prison food is bad:
This Correctional Officer for the South Dakota Department of Corrections says he’s hopeful for better days on the job, but there is a growing tension about the food.
“The kitchen supervisor said I don’t care. Send it out. That’s all we got,” he said.
…Some of the complaints include the high level of carbohydrates, presumably to meet the calorie requirements. Rice, potatoes, or pasta is the main portion of the meal. There’s little protein and no fresh vegetables. Specialty menus are available for various religious beliefs and there’s a heart-healthy meal lower in sodium [Beth Warden, “Prison Food Monopoly? Same Supplier for Meals and Commissary Packages,” KSFY, 2022.03.22].
If the three squares a day provided by the state’s contractor, Summit Food Service, are more like triangles, inmates can purchase extra sides through the commissary, which is also run by Summit Food Service:
“It’s essentially a monopoly. It doesn’t give them any other option,” said the anonymous Correctional Officer. “I know guys that exclusively live on their commissary because they refuse to eat the food in the dining hall.”
An inmate says he has to rely on his wife and kids to buy extra food from the commissary. Six packages of ramen noodles, two pouches of flaked tuna, and six sausage sticks cost thirty dollars.
“We have a monopoly going on,” said the inmate. “The very minimal is what they are feeding us. They turn around and have us buy their commissary which they jack their prices. It shouldn’t be that way” [Warden, 2022.03.22].
The new three-year contract for commissary services the state granted to Summit Food Services last week sets what appear to be reasonable prices for some food items: 34 cents for a pack of ramen, $1.60 for a 7-ounce pack of peanuts, and $2.52 for 10-count package of oatmeal. But of course, that’s from the perspective of a comfortable middle-class writer who’s free to shop around town for bargain orange juice and better-paying work. For an inmate whose family has been denied his earning power and who may be making 25 to 50 cents an hour building gun desks for the Governor, any price required to supplement the basic meals the prison is supposed to provide will bite, especially a price from the monopoly vendor who didn’t put enough food on his plate in the first place.
Commissary offerings listed in the contract Exhibit A are all processed and pre-packaged: Summit doesn’t appear to offer any fresh fruit or vegetables, but that’s a condition of the contract: every commissary item must be individually wrapped/packaged, dated, and non-perishable. Beverages are coffee, tea, and powdered drink mixes, no milk or juice.
In addition to the price of the groceries themselves, Summit gets to charge inmates and their family and friends a 10% transaction fee, with a minimum fee of $3.25, for deposits into their online commissary purchase accounts, a $4.99 processing fee for care packs ordered on Jail.ATM. Summit also takes a 5.25% commission on every product sold. And if Summit employs an inmates, it gets to pay for that labor at 25 cents an hour.
But hey, we underpay free South Dakotans and tax them on their food, too, so why should we feel bad for prisoners subjected to excessive fees on their groceries?
DOC says in its contract Q&A that male prisoners order $30 to $35 of commissary items per week, while female inmates order $35 to $40 per week, generating total gross sales of $4,231,843 over the 12-month period preceding issuance of the call for bids. Corrections took a $195,735 commission on those sales in Fiscal Year 2021. The state also charges inmates 6.5% sales tax.
Summit’s five-year contract for main food service, amended last year and slated to run through 2024, sets the state’s payment for each inmate meal at $1.51 at the State Pen, $1.50 at Springfield, $1.77 at the women’s prison in Pierre, and $2.06 at the Rapid City work center. The contract sets the following requirements for procurement of food, meal service, and menu planning:
Prison food shouldn’t be gourmet dining, but it should be enough to fill prisoners’ bellies and keep them healthy and quiet. There is punishment enough in the denial of liberty, including telling prisoners what they will eat and when they will eat it. Punishment should not include denial of basic nutrition or the driving of additional profits on the backs of the captive poor to a private vendor.
I am reminded of a passage from ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
“After the vegetable stew there was _magara_, that damned “Chinese” oatmeal. It had grown cold too, and had set into a solid lump. Shukhov broke it up into pieces. It wasn’t only that the oatmeal was cold–it was tasteless even when hot, and left you no sense of having filled your belly. Just grass, except that it was yellow, and looked like cereal. They’d got the idea of serving it instead of cereals from the Chinese, it was said.”
how about government surplus MREs? surplus milk products? How many tons of good food do supermarkets trash daily? government has tons of surplus food in warehouses…
Substandard prison food can become a public health problem:
Cheap food today means higher medical bills tomorrow, for prisons and for the public..
As a relative of an incarcerated individual I was requested to veiw the menu schedule. The purpose was to verify back to the inmate, that yes, the meals appeared to be adequate even though the quantity of servings miserly. I could only access menus a year to two years old for all the SD Prisons accept for SD State Penn in Sioux Falls, SD. Folks the menu is a lie. The inmates are served food that is not the actual print menu. Try the Noodle Pudding (noodles cooked to mush and flavored with Italian salad dressing incorporated. Yes, the dish is titled as such). I tried it at home..disgusting! Nor do they ever receive two cartons of milk at breakfast and definitely not at every meal. Try the Oatmeal (all three tablespoons of cold rubbery goodness & no milk!). Summits food contract has a clause which states all food holding spaces of the food tray must be filled with food items which meet standard guidelines. Summit may argue the trays inserts are in fact filled with food, however, new trays were purchased and the old trays retired quite awhile back. The new trays are significantly smaller! Therefore, inmates receive a lessor quantity of food and are still hungry. Oh yes, they can always order from Summits commissary service right!? You know, some families are extremely low to low-income and yet give as much assistance as they possibly can toward the care and needs of their loves ones. I have and I do. I have eaten one package of Roman Noodles per day since the pandemics start. Folks, I feel like death run over! The lack of nutrition as well as high salt/additives takes a toll over your health and body. I can only imagine how an inmate may feel on a wholistic level. If Summit can’t line their pockets one way, they will in yet another way! I have recently started eating better meals. Meals in which we take for granted as being readily available at our very whim. The food we desire or crave at any moment of any day is within grasp..just pull open the frig door! The inmate has lost that luxury. However, there is absolutely no excuse on God’s green earth that an inmates only option to not starve is to survive on non-nutrtious, miserly portions of trashcan gruel a cat wouldn’t even eat! You may consider me biased due to a loved one being incarcerated. No, I am not. I pray for and care about all of our inmates and their loves ones. For their health and wellbeing and safety. I say “our inmates” after all, we the taxpayer are responsible to oversee and ensure the Prison Systems & Officials we have entrusted with the care and safety of our incarcerated are kept honest and responsible. This can only be acheived through transparency. Thank you to the individuals who have come forward to report serious misconducts and/or unacceptable treatment/conditions regarding both inmates and staff members. As an Ex Corrections Officer I know first hand what is expected of and endured by our officers. I thank the officers who suit up and show up to work their shift. It can be thankless job but at the same time, a rewarding career. Lastly, if the Warden will investigate the Unit Manager(s) and cull out the one(s) who encourage abusive & dangerous behavior, inmate to inmate, as well as numerous suicides/deaths which have occurred on her/his watch the inmates may not live daily in fear of “disappearing”. No, the SD State Penn’s investigations and culling should continue on. Thank you to the Officers and inmates who believe in doing right!
You know Dave, Putin listened to Solzhenitsyn on Ukraine.