Friday, June 5, 2009
Restaurants Lunch-less in Georgia's prisons
Posted by Robyn Baitcher on Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 3:30 PM
Georgia prisons are getting national attention this morning for their initiative to save money by not giving prisoners lunch three days a week. According to an Associated Press article running in some major newspapers today, prisoners in Georgia will still get the same amount of calories every day (2,800 for men and 2,300 for women), but now won't get lunch on Fridays - in addition to Saturdays and Sundays, when state prisoners have been lunch-less for years now. Instead, they'll get bigger portions at breakfast and dinner on those days.
As the fifth-largest prison system in the nation, the Georgia Department of Corrections has seen some major budget cuts within the last fiscal year, and they have to make up for the difference any way they can. And at a time when Georgia has a child food insecurity rate of almost 20 percent, it’s hard to decide just who deserves how many free meals every day.
Opponents of the prison lunch cut back say it increases violence in prisons because inmates become disgruntled as food becomes a hot commodity. The AP pulled up reports of inmate assaults through an open records request for their story and found that reports of inmate assaults have increased "substantially" in Georgia prisons for fiscal year 2009 over the previous year. However, it is unclear if there is any connection between the assaults and the lack of lunch.
(Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
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"Nationally, one in every thirty-two adults is under some form of correctional supervision, in prison or jail, or on probation or parole. Incredibly, Georgia leads the nation with one in every fifteen adult Georgians under some form of correctional oversight." http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/NewsRoom/PublicInformation/ChooseFreedom.html One in fifteen? No wonder DOC can't get together than many peanut butter sandwiches....wait a minute--doesn't peanut butter come from Georgia? WTF? I guess it's time to stop putting non-violent pot smokers in prison. CA is learning this at present, so I guess it will take GA another 150 years to catch on.
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