We the hungry want to know: where is the food?
Donna Anderson, an elderly woman incarcerated at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF), has just exited the chow hall. She spent her allotted 20 minutes consuming her evening meal, but she’s still hungry. She will not stay hungry, however, because once she returns to her cell, she will consume food she purchased from the prison canteen.
So often, as citizens of this great country, we pat ourselves on the back on how progressive we are in the area of human rights. Well, right here, in a prison near you, we are failing our incarcerated individuals by leaving them hungry. They are hungry because the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is not providing them with enough food to keep their bellies full.
If you are an indigent incarcerated person, meaning you have no financial support coming in, then you are dependent upon the state’s largesse to feed you enough calories to sustain you. Period.
Angelica Harris, a new indigent arrival to CCWF, said, “The meals and lunches are ‘kiddie meals.’ Who gets two pieces of broccoli as a serving, or two strawberries?”
Breakfast consists of raw diced potatoes, still-cold gelatinous chorizo, runny grits, a hard biscuit, and apple juice. The hummus lunch is the least popular. It consists of a small packet of pretzels, a 3-oz packet of hummus, a tiny packet of cookies, and a faux juice pack. It comes sealed so one can’t be shorted, but what is there to short, really? This is what the state provides as sustenance for the day until dinnertime. Imagine how hungry the incarcerated construction workers must be by the end of the day.
As it stands, not going hungry is often contingent upon whether a) you know someone serving that day who may throw an extra potato on your tray, b) you are bold enough to pull an “Oliver Twist” at the window and ask for “more please,” or c) you set aside ego and wander the chow hall asking “are you going to eat that?” On any given day, all three of the above situations happen.
To add insult to injury, per policy, kitchen workers are supposed to throw away all the extra food in dumpsters that are kept locked. Why lock up food trash? Ostensibly, it is so that incarcerated persons don’t “Shawshank” their way out. But why throw the food away at all? Why not simply serve the amounts the way the menu reads?
Of course, one is able to utilize the grievance process to address the issue. However, as anyone who has grieved this issue knows, this is a battle. According to Eileen Huber, a long-term resident, “This issue has been grieved before. It is never addressed and so is never resolved.”
Each time a grievance is answered, the incarcerated individual receives a response that variation of: kitchen policy states that 3-5 oz ladles are to be used when serving meals. It makes one want to scream: “But the ladles are not being used!” The ladles are there, present and accounted for, but they are not actually being used. And that defeats the whole purpose.
As of press time, none of the incarcerated kitchen workers agreed to comment.
An issue moves from the realm of the pervasive to an unaddressed systemic issue when all the players involved either pass the buck or categorically deny the issue exists. And when avenues that could help fail, a learned helplessness sets in, accompanied by a “why bother” mindset.
Taryn Church said, “I’ve given up. Nobody is ever going to do anything; I feel sad for people who have no choice but to eat chow hall food.”
Bottom line, there is a marked discrepancy between what the menu states and what is actually being served. With the advent of the California Model, it is time for all stakeholders to put into practice what our new carceral culture espouses – normalization. There is nothing more normal than needing to eat. Therefore, it is time for CCWF to feed us what the world at large believes we are being fed.
As simplistic as it sounds, sometimes all it takes is one voice. I hear it said all the time in prison, “closed mouths don’t get fed.” Don’t be the closed, hungry mouth that doesn’t get fed.
