Prison Food Illness: Jeremy Busby on Why Incarceration Makes People Sick

Jeremy Busby writes about prison food illness and why meals served inside jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers routinely make people sick.

Incarceration has always been a complete mystery to people who have never experienced it directly or had someone close to them arrested. Recently a number of detainees at U.S. Immigration detention centers have emerged with horrifying stories about the food making them ill.

Most notably was 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos who was sent to South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas after being detained in the driveway of his home as he wore a blue bunny hat. After his release, Ramos through a translator described how the food served made his stomach hurt.

As a person who has been incarcerated for nearly three decades, countless people have asked me the nature of prison food and more importantly, why does it make people ill. The answer to that very important question can be practically explained in one sentence: The food processing operations inside of the nation’s jails, prisons, and detention centers violates public health standards that are applicable to food services establishment on the outside!

Why the System Fails Basic Health Standards

In greater details, those who are responsible for food services operations inside correctional and immigration facilities have little to no real experience managing entire food service establishments. In Texas prisons, the requirements to be a Food Service Manager are extremely low. In fact, a mere six months of prior food service experience makes you qualified. That means if you operated the drive-thru at McDonald’s or waited tables at Applebee’s for at least six months, you are an ideal candidate.

As a result of the dehumanization of people who are detained or incarcerated, prison officials don’t prioritize providing those in their custody with wholesome meals that could eat into the agency’s budget literally. Menus inside the facilities consist of a heavy diet of starchy items like biscuits, cornbread, and pancakes. When vegetables are served they mostly come from canned goods and are extremely dated and overcooked. The meat is always a variety of some soybean processed mixture that oftentimes are undercooked and/or spoiled upon delivery. Finally, the habit to recycle items results in most meals being contaminated with harmful bacteria.

Recycled Food and Contamination

For example, the leftover beans or corn would be held until the next day and recycled into a stew or soup. The same is done with leftover meats. When you add the fact that most food service departments suffer extensively from rodent and insect infestations, improper food handling and storage protocols, and the overall unsanitary conditions that are prevalent, it all adds up to the possibility of widespread health problems.

British journalist Sami Hamdi detailed his horrific experience with the food in ICE detention. Consumption of the food creates excoriating pain to the extent Hamdi thought one of his internal organs had ruptured.

“Every detainee was like the first two weeks you suffered here, especially when it comes to the food,” Hamdi explained. Even when the internal pain subsided, Hamdi said the food still made him vomit repeatedly.

Inside the Prison Kitchen

I recall the first day I was assigned to work in the kitchen. The filth, flies, and roaches were unmeasurable. The restroom smelt like an unkept Port-a-Potty and I noticed there was no soap available to disinfect your hands before returning back to work. Within a few hours, I witnessed all types of disgusting acts from retrieving meat that had been dropped on the floor and placing it back into the serving pan, to removing roaches from a bag of grains before cooking it.

The most disturbing incident I encountered was at the end of the shift, when a set of guys removed their T-shirts and gym shorts to wash before leaving the kitchen. Since the prison fails to provide any methods or chemicals for incarcerated people to wash their personal cloths, the guys wanted to take advantage of the hot water, liquid soap, and powder bleach that were available in the kitchen. But instead of locating a bucket to perform this task, all the guys gathered on the cook floor and tossed all their soiled clothing into one of the empty kettles that are used to prepare the meals.

The Thanksgiving That Made Everyone Sick

It was the food service department that destroyed my desire to ever enjoy a Thanksgiving meal. The first year I was in prison I went to the dining hall and enjoyed the by-prison-standards lavish spread. There was processed Turkey and cornbread stuffing, gravy, green beans casserole, beans, and cake. It was all shockingly delicious.

But I woke up the next morning with unbearable stomach pains. My cellmate had already spent the entire night on the toilet with a relentless bout of diarrhea. Next I heard guys all up and down my tier complaining about various digestive complications that were all similar to what my cellmate and I experienced.

Speculation began to enter the prison’s rumor mill. “The Turkey was no good,” one person said. “I didn’t eat the Turkey,” said another ailing person.

“It was the greenbean casserole,” another guy said confidently! “I didn’t eat that shit,” shot back another digestive crippled person.

After a ton of back and forth, along with a process of elimination that would had made all of our elementary school teachers proud, we identified the culprit. It was the gravy! Some genius mixed canned chicken in with the gravy which was prepared a day prior. Instead of allowing it to cool at room temperature before placing it into the refrigerator, they stored it hot. The following day they retrieved it and reheated it. Needless to say, it gave all of us, including the guards, the worst battle with “the shits” that no human wants to experience. It was so bad that the mere mentioning of Thanksgiving meals sends me into a near-coma induced state so traumatic that either my stomach starts hurting or I have to immediately go take a shit! It was that serious.

Haven’t had a Thanksgiving meal since, that was 27 years ago. I leave my portions for the rats and roaches that live all-year long in the kitchen. Seriously, if the food service departments inside these places were ever subjected to a public health inspection, they would be immediately closed down.

The post Prison Food Illness: Jeremy Busby on Why Incarceration Makes People Sick first appeared on Prison Writers.