Junk Food in Jail: Pacifying or Paternalistic?

The printed edition of the Wall Street Journal published last week a piece about the increasing availability of junk food for purchase at county jail commissaries. Aramark Corp., a giant food provider, offers families the possibility to purchase hot wings, pizza, nachos, vanilla cappuccino and other food items, tailoring them to the different regulations of country jails through their icare website. The list of jails includes several CA facilities.

Advocates say the deliveries give guards a potent disciplinary tool: Be good or you won’t get your jalapeno poppers.

Revenue from the meals has saved prison programs, such as parenting classes, wardens say. And in some institutions, inmates get job-trainign credit for preparing the hot meals in the jail kitchen and packaging the junk-food boxes.

Plus, said Deputy Chief Debra Jordan, who runs detention programs in Bexar County, given the “very humble” quality of prison food, letting an offender’s mom buy him a club sandwich now and then “is an act of kindness.”

Critics, however, fear the deliveries will inspire envy, violence and extortion. “It’s like with kids–you don’t bring cookies to school unless you’ve got enough for everyone,” said Gordon Crews, a criminal justice professor at Marshall University.

Wardens who have tried the program say that hasn’t been a problem. Many prisons have long let well-behaved inmates order good such as CD players, sneakers and mini-TVs. “Hails are always run better when your inmates are happy,” said Capt. Richard Fisher, the jail administrator in Rock Island County, Ill.

This piece has made me think quite a bit about paternalism and the role of jail in behavior modification. I can see how interfering with grownups’ food choices is a very problematic thing to do; the public debates about approaching obesity invoke the same sort of questions. And yet, when we lock people up, the hope is that we might do something better. I can’t help but think that the industrialized aspect of the junk food delivery enterprise, complete with providing prison authorities with docile, buffalo-wings-fed inmates, is less exciting an opportunity than programs like Philadelphia’s City Harvest, which creates a garden within walls and gives people the opportunity many of them did not have, to connect directly with nature and with their food. I’m not even talking about the potential health-expense implications of fast food consumption in jail, but rather about giving people the opportunity to consider their food choices, as well as other life choices, when they have time to consider those. Maybe I am being too paternalistic, or imposing my own food choices, which, granted, are class- and lifestyle-driven, on others. In any case, I don’t feel entirely comfortable with this system, and I’d love to hear your comments.

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props to Ocean Mottley who alerted me to this.

Close the CA Division of Juvenile Justice

Daniel Macallair has made an outstanding argument in the LA Times for closing the Division of Juvenile Justice and its five state-run youth correctional facilities. “The system is broken everywhere you look.” Allowing counties, instead of the state, to house juvenile offenders (currently about 1,400 of them) would save the state government $322.7 million (yes, a third of a billion dollars). County probation systems already handle 99% of juvenile cases.

On Conspiracy Theories and the Prison Industrial Complex

Business Insider is not one of the usual places where I go for news, but I got there this morning via the Prison Law Blog. The newssite suggests that hedge funders like Bill Ackman might be displeased with the recently dropping prison rates. The reason? Counting on growing imprisonment rates, Ackman has invested heavily in Corrections Corporations of America. Here is his presentation on the company. One of the slides bears the title, “Tenants Unlikely to Default”.

Bill Ackman’s Presentation on Corrections Corp of America (CXW) @ the Value Investing Congress

Much has been written about the business aspect of prisons, and especially on privatization. The broader context is discussed in Nils Christie’s Crime Control as Industry, which defines the prison system as a mechanism of “depersonalized pain delivery”. A more personal-political statement, highlighting racial differences as well as the economic angle, can be found in Angela Davis’ The Prison Industrial Complex. For our purposes, this is an important discussion to have when policymakers are contemplating contracts with CCA for out-of-state institutions as overcrowding relief. The question is whether it is accurate to see Bill Ackman’s cost-benefit calculation as proof of an intentional conspiracy to keep the prison industry alive and well. And if so, who’s in on the conspiracy?

My sense is that a more subtle and nuanced description will do better. While CDCR employment depends on prisons, not all CDCR employees cynically hope for overcrowded prisons. If anything, CCPOA decry prison overcrowding, if only because it makes the correctional staff’s job more difficult. Yes, there are those who make profit off the size of our correctional apparatus. But it’s important to distinguish actors with financial interests from actors within large bureaucracies who operate out of inertia, and some of whom probably rejoice in the news of population decline.

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cross-posted on PrawfsBlawg.

Prison Rape: NYRB Series and CA Report

I wanted to draw your attention to Sasha Natapoff‘s recent post on Prawfsblawg about prison rape. She links to a two-part essay in the New York Review of Books about the variation in state efforts to stop prison rape. I really recommend the post.

There is also a California angle: UC Irvine researchers at the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections prepared a 2007 report to CDCR about sexual assault in CA institutions. Conducting face-to-face interviews with 322 randomly-selected inmates, Val Jenness, et al., found great variance in the frequency of assaults: 4% of the interviewee sample reported being sexually assaulted in a CA institution, but the rates were much higher among special populations: 59% of transgender inmates reported abuse. While sexual assault was prevalent for almost all inmates, non-heterosexual inmates and Black inmates were considerable more vulnerable to sexual assault.. There was also a strong correlation between victimization and mental health problems. The report includes some details about the characteristics of incidents, notably the gang context of many incidents, and the difficulty in labeling incidents as coercive, as opposed to “part of prison life”, even when all incidents invoke fear, self-blame, and subsequent problems. Jenness et al also address overcrowding as a contributing factor to sexual assault incidents.

New Bill introduced: Pregnant Inmates and Wards’ Conditions

Assembly Bill 1900, authored by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, advocates for special standards of care for pregnant inmates and wards.

There has been some attention to the particular circumstances of pregnancy within bars. This 2006 NYT article exposes some of the less pleasant aspects of care: women in labor kept in shackles, given no more than Tylenol, supposedly out of concerns of escape (though there aren’t any known cases of women in labor escaping. Pregnant inmates experience particular challenges during their incarceration. High rates of drug abuse and addiction complicate medical treatment (also see here). In addition, pregnant inmates report traumatic family histories and require more assistance and support during their pregnancy. A 1997 study suggests that adequate shelter and nutritional support make a big difference in terms of birth outcomes among inmates.
The proposed bill would amend the CA Penal Code to require the usage of the least intrusive methods (consistent with public safety concerns) for restricting pregnant inmates or wards during transportation and incarceration. It also requires monitoring other conditions, such as offering nutritional support and counseling about pregnancy, birth, and childcare options. The Corrections Standards Authority would assume responsibility for the particulars and would consult with a variety of professionals before setting them. Some prohibited measures are listed in the bill (though it is not an exhaustive list): shackling the feet and hands, shackling across the body, or shackling to another inmate.
The bill comes before the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee on March 30.
On a related topic, here’s an interesting blog post from Feministing about inmates’ access to abortion.
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Props to Ocean Mottley for alerting me to this.

SHU at Pelican Bay

Our daily correspondence sometimes includes letters from inmates, informing us of the situation within walls. Recently, several letters have arrived from Pelican Bay Prison, from inmates incarcerated at the prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU). A form of supermax incarceration, SHU consists of 22-23 hours of solitary confinement a day.
SHU has been designed for escape risks, violent or threatening inmates, and “members of disruptive groups”, such as gangs. There are some challenges involved in appropriately classifying inmates into SHU or general population. Classification is a crucial issue, because research on solitary confinement consistently shows that SHU-like conditions adversely and severely impact inmates’ mental health (here’s a 1993 piece by Craig Haney on this and a 2009 New Yorker article reviewing research and including interviews).
The concept of solitary confinement is not new. Our visit notes from Eastern State Penitentiary in PA might be useful. However, the purpose has changed. While the original ideology behind solitary confinement was to provoke repentance, rebirth, and rehabilitation, current supermax isolation conditions are aimed at incapacitation and safety.
Here is Laura Sullivan’s 2006 NPR story about SHU and the solitary conditions. The institution currently exceeds its design capacity by approximately 1,200 inmates.

“Five Faiths” Prison Chaplain Policy: Developments

A while ago, we reported about Patrick McCollum’s legal stuggle for recognition by CDCR as a paid Chaplain for the Wiccan inmate community. The Pagan blog The Wild Hunt, which is closely following the proceedings, offers a rather useful summary of the developments in the case, including some links to documents. One notable new development is this amicus brief by the right-wing Christian organization Wallbuilders, which argues that the Founders’ original intent would not have included Paganism or Witchcraft as a religion in its own right, and therefore, McCollum cannot be awarded standing for representing Pagan taxpayers. This seems to be a rather dated argument, especially in light of developments such as the Department of Veteran Affairs agreement (after a legal struggle) to allow the pentagram, a Wiccan symbol, as a marker on soldiers’ graves. Constitutional law enthusiasts might be interested in following this case when it gets to the 9th Circuit.

Kristof on Humanity

In case you missed Nicholas Kristof’s column in the 1/27/10 New York Times, it’s right here. Kristof relates statistics and instances of violence in prisons, especially sexual violence, especially in juvenile prisons, especially by prison guards. “I’ve never written about the horrors that unfold in American prisons — especially juvenile correctional facilities — on a far larger scale than at Guantánamo.”

Of course, it is a premise of this blog that our prisons are in a financial crisis. But as Kristof indirectly recognizes, sometimes the economic angle lets me temporarily forget the human angle. Rights that we can often take for granted in this country, including physical safety, are daily struggles frequently lost in our prisons. The real human costs of our failing correctional institutions are sickeningly deplorable, and prison reform will always be about more than money.

More on Religion in Prisons: Five Faiths, Four Meals?

Recently, we discussed prison and religion in the context of Patrick McCollum’s suit to acknowledge the need for a paid Wiccan chaplain in CDCR institutions. The brand new Prison Law blog led us to a piece on the Fresno Bee, which reports that CDCR plans to add a Halal food option to its already existing Kosher meat and vegetarian fare.

The department is seeking the change in the face of pressure from several Muslim inmates who have filed lawsuits alleging discrimination. Inmate attorneys have seized on the department’s decision in 2006 to offer special kosher meals to Jewish inmates.

“They’ve said Jewish prisoners have a right to practice their religion in a certain way, but Muslim prisoners don’t have that same right,” said Nathaniel Garrett, the court-appointed attorney for Menefield, who filed a civil rights complaint in federal court in 2008.


Victims-rights advocates counter that the state made a mistake in offering any religious meals. Prisoners lost those rights when they committed a crime, said Harriet Salarno, president of Crime Victims United of California.


“It would be cruel if we denied them food … but we’re not denying them nourishment,” she said. “This country is made up of all kinds of religions. Where is it going to end?”
This may seem like a relatively minor issue, but it has a rich history, that has to do with the struggle of Muslim inmates to obtain rights and their incredible contribution to inmate litigation in California. Some of the important religious struggles in prison have had to do with concerns over safety and riots, whose roots are in the radicalized Black Muslim population of the 1970s. The relationship between prison administration and the Muslim inmate population has been a concern for the Federal Bureau of Prisons for quite some time, and some are concerned that the post-9/11 world has led to “Islamophobia” in correctional institutions.
While reading materials and worship gatherings have the potential to incite rebellion, food is a significantly less controversial matter. The issue is the importance of religion vis-a-vis the expense involved. In this particular case, before even engaging in that balance, it is a case of religious discrimination, plain and simple. Since the prison already offers Kosher and vegetarian meals, it would appear that the argument raised by Ms. Salarno has clay feet (and that’s before even looking at the argument for morality or on its merits). The question that CDCR does not need to currently face would be the detail with which they should comply with minute differences in religious requirements for different sects (for example, there are several different levels of Jewish Kosher certification; there is glatt certification to consider, ethnic differences, etc).

Book Review: Sunbelt Justice by Mona Lynch

Mona Lynch’s new book Sunbelt Justice will hit very close to home for Californian readers. The book tells the story of the Arizonian correctional system, starting with the early twentieth century and ending with Janet Napolitano’s time as governor. It is a fascinating account, which those of us interested in California corrections will read like a good political thriller.

Two principles underlie the Arizonian correctional philosophy: an ethos of self-sufficiency, which led to a lack of sympathy toward offenders, and a dislike for large governments, accompanied by sentiments of frugality. The early days of Arizona corrections were shaped by these ideas. Unencumbered by a yet-nonexistent central command and headed by strong personalities, prisons and juvenile institutions were run on the cheap, relying on a combination of inmate work and tough discipline for their daily operations.

Things briefly changed during the late 1960s with the formation of the Department of Corrections, which was headed, in its initial years, by outsiders. Its first Director, Allen Cook, was a veteran of the California correctional apparatus, and brought with him the large bureaucracies and rehabilitative ideals that characterized California corrections at the time. Initially welcomed, Cook ended up overstaying his welcome. The series of outsiders that succeeded him – most notably McDougall, who brought with him a system of good credits and community corrections reminiscent of Machonochie and, more recently, Murton – were unsupported, and eventually ousted, by the state politics.

The reign of Director Sam Lewis and his successors can best be seen as a reinstatement of a “new-old regime”. Lynch does an excellent job presenting this era’s complexities. On one hand, it is very much in line with (or ahead of) developments that were occurring elsewhere in the nation: the disillusionment with the rehabilitative idea and the emergence of law-and-order politics. On the other hand, in the Arizonian context, it is a variation on the original old theme of harsh discipline and no rehabilitation, a nostalgic return to the roots, albeit with the complication of exponential growth in prison population and a much larger bureaucratical apparatus.

Particular emphasis is given to this transformative period between the late 1970s and mid-1990s; Lynch provides a multilayered account of state politics, federal prison litigation, and their detrimental impact on prison conditions.

It is illuminating to compare Lynch’s insightful and informative account with the parallel Californian history. Arizona was not nearly as committed as California to the rehabilitative ideal, and its early correctional style was much more “Texan” than Californian. The model of inmate farm labor, accompanied by harsh discipline, reminded me very much of the incredible footage in Susanne Mason’s Writ Writer. In that respect, the backlash of the 1980s felt much more like a “homecoming” to toughness and frugality. However, many features are familiar. The political shift to the New Right and the increasing centrality of crime control to political campaigns are very familiar. So are the various legislative acts and voter initiatives of the mid-1990s, which in Arizona, as in California, failed to take into account the disastrous financial effect of county-level increasing sentences on state-level corrections. Even victim initiatives, which are downplayed in Lynch’s account, are in the background, as in California.

The questions I’m left with have to do with the level at which history is made. Arizonian correctional history was shaped by strong personalities, who played, to varying levels of success, on a changing political arena. Is it possible to swing back the punitive pendulum, citing costs? That is what Director McDougall attempted to do in the early 1980s, with only limited and temporary success. This Arizonian lesson does not bode well for an era in California in which the only effective argument against punitiveness is related to taxpayers’ wallets. The other ominous lesson is that of the Supreme Court’s limited support for federal intervention in Arizona prisons, providing only weak support to Judge Muecke’s constant supervision and review of the state’s prison population and conditions. The Roberts court may exhibit a similar level of inhospitability toward the federal intervention in California. Under such conditions, forceful and innovative personalities can prevail only for a limited time, and the fate of the system is ultimately shaped by broader socio-political developments. Perhaps we are now in a better place, and state citizenry recognizes the unsustainability of our correctional monster. In the meantime, Lynch’s excellent book offers an opportunity for grim reflection.