Inmate meal cutbacks assailed

[PfcHammer]

http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ca/budget/story/9301906p-10226803c.html

Inmate meal cutbacks assailed
The governor's plan to ax weekend sack lunches angers reform groups.

By Clea Benson -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Saturday, May 15, 2004

In a $103 billion budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to take sack lunches away from prisoners on weekends adds up to about a 0.001 percent cut.

But prison food has carried enormous symbolism since the days when inmates had to subsist on bread and water. The tiny line item in the governor's revised spending plan is resounding.

Prison-reform groups began protesting almost immediately after the GOP governor released details Thursday. Others saw the cut as a statement the governor was making the least sympathetic citizens feel the pain of budget woes while restoring funds for poor children's health care.

California will join many states that have cut back on prison food to trim costs. Virginia and Minnesota shifted last year to feeding prisoners only twice a day on weekends and holidays. Texas cut the number of daily calories it serves to prisoners to 2,500 from 2,800. Iowa's prisons stopped giving inmates two desserts and switched to a powdered drink mix instead of juice.

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[bluestateguy]

1. That's right!

We're coddling these criminals! Get rid of air conditioning in the prisons; get rid of weight machines; bread and water only! look the other way when the prisoners rape each other; put 'em in at 4 to a cell and make 'em work 80 hours a week picking cotton! That'll cut crime!

:eyes:

[billbuckhead]

2. Getting rid of the weight machines isn't a bad idea. Air conditioning?

But prison rape is a national disgrace.

[mom cat]

3. Let them eat catsup!

[thebaghwan]

4. Let's see catsup or ketchup is a vegetable even though it is in a bottle?

[0007]

5. Tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable.

Everyone knows that!

[PfcHammer]

7. botanically yes. legally no. Nix v. Hedden 1893

[ibegurpard]

6. Sorry

As long as prisoners are being fed enough balanced meals and treated with some basic human dignity then I can't find any outrage to spare.