BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Back in the day of chain gangs, Alabama passed a law that gave sheriffs $1.75 a day to feed each prisoner in their jails, and the sheriffs got to pocket anything that was left over. More than 80 years later, most Alabama counties still operate under this system, with the same $1.75-a-day allowance, and some sheriffs are actually making money on top of their salaries.

But exactly how much is something of a mystery because state auditors do not have access to sheriffs’ private accounts.

How could anyone turn a profit feeding men and women for an entire day on less than the price of a Coke and a bag of Fritos? Sheriffs practice Depression-style frugality and rely on such things as day-old bread, cut-rate vegetables and cheap inmate labor.

Critics charge that Alabama is, in effect, paying law enforcement to skimp on food and may be rewarding sheriffs for mistreating prisoners.

“It’s a bad system, and it ought not be that way,” said Buddy Sharpless, executive director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama.

A prisoner advocate said he constantly hears complaints about jail food.

I have a serious suggestion for the inmates, if you don’t like the food, don’t do anything that will get your sorry ass locked up, how simple can it be??

Complaints about ‘jailhouse cuisine’?? I am shocked, shocked that anyone would actually give a damn about the food and the guys eating it…

When I was a kid raised in Louisiana we had ‘road gangs’ and the Parish jail was called a ‘P-Farm’, short for penal farm and the prisoners had to work if they wanted to eat, and by golly they ate pretty good, they raised their own beef, pork, chickens, and they farmed their fields raising vegetables, and anything they didn’t use in the mess hall was sold to the public and the convicts actually made some money…

Then some bleeding heart SOB from the ACLU or some similar trash decided that the cons needed color TV, air conditioning and so forth, and that working in the fields was some sort of ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment, and then the state and parish had to start picking up the bill to feed the cons…

Needless to say, that bunch of bleeding heart libbers messed up a good thing, the food went to hell and the cons got some shyster to sue over it, taxes went up and the cons had a better life than a lot of citizens did…

“Most of it is like powdered food, and the portions are minimal in the county jails,” said the Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, who visits Alabama jails to register prisoners to vote.

Anyone want to take a bet on this?? I say the vast majority of the cons that register, do so as Democrats, just sayin’…

Inmate William Howell said state prisons offer more food than Blakely’s jail. But he said the food in state prison isn’t nearly as good.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when an inmate can be a food critic on the local, county and state level, I am guessing that’s maybe a ‘career criminal’??

I have heard these stories before, cons that knew who had the cleanest jail, the best beds, the best and most food, the most lenient guards, all of it, and it is in the pipeline, they KNOW, it’s like a registry of hotels, 3 hots and a cot, a shower and a warm place in the winter, my Dad told me that back during the depression that the hobo’s had a network very similar…

Maybe it’s because I have never seen the inside of a jail when I couldn’t walk out, maybe that’s why, but I can’t understand the mentality that drive these guys to become lifetime cons, maybe it’s like the homeless people, ya offer them a place to stay and they tell you how much they prefer the street, gotta be the same thing…

Full Story Here:
Alabama sheriffs feed inmates on $1.75 a day

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