From the Editor
by Paul Wright
Our cover story this month reports on the privatization of prison and jail food services. Prison food has long been the punchline of many jokes and generally the criticism is well deserved. That said, its quality and quantity have steadily declined over the years, and once again stepping into the void to make things worse is the private, for-profit prison industry. Contrary to popular belief, food budgets make up a tiny percentage of the cost of actually running a detention facility, so the savings to be had tend to be minimal at best.
Government-run food services are often no better. We have long reported on prisoners in government-run prisons being fed rotten, expired, or “distressed” food, being literally starved to death and much more. Comparing private, for-profit food services to those provided by the government is comparing one pile of rotting, stinking swill with another. One consequence that I have never seen discussed, much less acknowledged by anyone who runs a prison system, is the connection between bad, unhealthy food and negative health consequences such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity and more, with the resultant higher health care costs and mortality rates—especially when prisoners are eating an unhealthy diet for years or decades on end.
We have several books in production. Our first new title is going to be the updated third edition of Protecting your Health and Safety. We are currently finalizing the manuscript and hope to have it at the printer by the end of the month. The second edition is out of print and we do not have any copies left. We will announce the availability of the third edition as soon as it is ready. We hope to have at least two more titles ready by the end of the year.
The Human Rights Defense Center, the publisher of Prison Legal News, continues fighting censorship battles around the country as states and jails alike continue using mail digitization as an excuse to ban publications and further restrict the information that prisoners can receive. If you are a prisoner and are denied access to PLN, please contact us and let us know as prison and jail censors rarely inform us of the censorship.
As this issue goes to press, we are in the hottest months of summer and prisoners in many facilities across the country are languishing without air conditioning as temperatures go over 100 degrees. We have reported on the lack of temperature controls and attendant deaths from heat related illnesses for decades. Typically, I would note that virtually all the affected prisons without air conditioning were in the states of the former Confederacy, big surprise. As temperatures rise, we are seeing much higher temperatures farther north than we have in the past, including in prisons in Iowa and Illinois, among other states.
The dangers posed by rising heat is compounded by the increased risk of wild fires and drought that accompany climate change. The decisions by state and federal governments to locate prisons in rural, remote areas is turning out to have been a bad idea in more ways that were not obvious at the time. One of the most ironic things is so many prisons were built in rural areas to provide jobs to poor, rural whites and now government officials are shocked to discover they may have a hard time staffing prisons in remote, rural areas. Given the working conditions which include cell blocks with sweltering heat and no air conditioning, it is little wonder no one wants to work there. The pay may be the same at Walmart but at least Walmart is air conditioned.
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