Daily Archive for March 31st, 2008

PRISON PUNISHMENT CHOW SOUGHT FOR FAMINE RELIEF

Montpelier, Vt, April 1…”It’s worse than solitary,” one convicted murderer says. “I’d rather go hungry than eat it,” says a child molester.

It’s nutraloaf, a mixture of cubed whole wheat bread, nondairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste and dehydrated potato flakes and it’s given to misbehaving prisoners who start fights, assault guards or throw their feces.

Vermont Corrections Commissioner Rob Hoffmann acknowledges that it doesn’t taste very good. “It reminded me of eating my vegetables,” he said, ”and I’m not necessarily a big fan of vegetables”.

But according to the Associated Press, “prison officials see nutraloaf as a tool for behavior modification.” After a few days on nutraloaf most prisoners mend their ways, officials say. The mere threat of an exclusive diet of nutraloaf has decreased incidents of “food abuse,” feces throwing, urine attacks, and excrement bombs.

But prisoners claim that forcing them to eat nutraloaf is “cruel and inhuman” and thus a violation of the Constitution. And the courts agree. A federal judge ruled in 1988 that prisoners had to be put into segregation before they could be given nutraloaf. The Supreme Court has described a similar food used in Arkansas as “intolerably cruel” if given for weeks or months.

Now the Vermont Prisoner’s Rights Office wants to ban its use. Nutraloaf is not behavior modification it’s “punishment plain and simple,” says attorney Seth Lipshutz.

But one man’s punishment can be another’s salvation. Nutraloaf may find a new life in the famine-wracked areas of the Sudan. Leah Schildkraut, pediatric nutrition specialist for the Anarcho-Feminist Alliance had nutraloaf analyzed by a panel of experts. They found that it is a “complete meal,” she said. “If eaten with a bowl of rice it can supply the daily requirement of protein and vitamins for a starving child.”

Schildkrautt has organized a nutraloaf collection drive at all the prisons in the US. She hopes to airlift tons of the food into Africa in the next few months.

“Food that is considered unfit for criminals in the US will save millions of lives in Africa,” Schildkraut says.