Jail Food Is A Killer

Jail is terrible for your health.

Your mental health and your physical health!

The county jail is not meant to house people long term.

In fact, people who are sentenced to jail time spend less than 365 days.

The exception is pre-trial detainees who cannot afford bond or have no bond.

They can spend up until the defense is ready for trial, with other circumstances like the right to a speedy trial exception making an effect as well.

I spent over 3 years in the county jail waiting for trial. A trial that never happened.

With that said,

The food.

It was full of sodium, all processed, low-grade quality meat. No fruit, no fresh vegetables, no milk.

They served meals at 4:45am, lunch at 11am, and dinner at 4pm.

That meant you don’t eat from 4pm- 5am unless you have commissary.

To me, it’s designed for you to starve so you can beg your loved ones for money for commissary.

Breakfast was 2 hardboiled eggs, a jelly sandwich and an oatmeal cake, or a peanut butter sandwich and a cake. No cereal and milk. No fruits.

Lunch was usually some form of fake meat, fake mashed potatoes and some canned vegetable.

Dinner was the same. They were both hot meals, but I’d rather just had a sandwich and chips.

You may find hair, a fingernail, blood, or any other random particle of something that shouldn’t be in your food, in your food! They would get you another tray if they had one available but who would have an appetite after seeing that?

The “juice” is sugary vitamin water in huge jugs that never get cleaned. There was mold in the bottom of the jugs and mold in the nozzles.

Sometimes the water in the jail tasted like chemicals.

It was hard water so it would make your hair fall out, and your skin so dry it would flake. Yet that is all we had to drink.

The commissary: chips, pickles, salami, peanut butter, crackers, chili, noodles, tuna, cookies, candy, Kool-Aid packets, and a bunch of other gas station foods.

I lived on tuna, chili, pickles and chips.

I don’t eat any of that shit now.

The pregnant women got double trays, and an evening snack. The snack was usually celery or carrots and a peanut butter sandwich, sometime boiled eggs which is the same as breakfast.

Nothing nutritious enough for mom AND baby.

One day at lunch they passed out a sports drink and pizza from Little Ceasars pizza.

We knew something was wrong. Apparently, half of the jail was vomiting and shitting all over the place.

They had to investigate the cause which could possibly be the food.

We had catered meals for 5 days: McDonald’s, Hy-Vee, Meals On Wheels, etc.

We were told it was a stomach virus, but rumors were that someone tampered with the food or juice, or it was food poisoning.

No one in the pod I was in got sick. But we were put on lockdown for 5 days due to this unknown illness along with the rest of the jail.

Meaning we could only come out of our tiny cell for one hour a day to shower or to use the phone. The other 23 hours we were locked in a cell the size of a small closet with a toilet and possibly one to three more people. I was in a cell alone.

It was nice to enjoy food outside of the jail “chow” (that’s so degrading by the way), but it was torture being locked up all day and night. With the lights dimmed. Depressing!

The health department gave us a form to fill out. It listed all the food we were supposedly given the days before the sickness. There were things on there that we didn’t even get. Like meat in the morning for breakfast. Butter with our bread. And a few other things.

We let it be known on the form that we did not consume that because we did not receive that lol.

I’m sure those papers never made it back to the health department.

Someone from the Sherriff’s department told the media that correction officers were coming around and helping the inmates clean their cells.

This was FALSE!

They came around and gave us two sanitizer wipes each and went on their way.

Also, right after that happened, one of jail administrators left their position. Interesting huh?!

I respected this jail administrator as they at least seemed to care about mental health and people in general.

Moving on…

There is no form of exercise available aside from another concrete box connected to the pod that you can walk in for one hour.

Our hour was at 8am. No one got up until at least 10am in the pod I was in.

You could do push-ups and sit-ups but there were no weights, or machines.

No basketball hoop. No volleyball net.

Nothing.

Just a big ass concrete cage. With a couple of caged windows at the top, that you can’t see out of aside from the clouds, depending on where they are in the sky.

I was told the men used books as weights. Which pissed us women off who actually read the books.

The men would hoard all the good books to exercise with and leave us with nothing but romance and Christian novels (not everyone’s cup of tea).

There’s also no motivation to do any movement.

Everyone just sat around, watched tv, read books, gossiped, or slept.

I had high blood pressure in jail.

I gained over 50 pounds at one point. I was 180lbs.

When I went to jail, I was only 125lbs.

Once I left jail and started to eat real food, I no longer need blood pressure medication.

I also lost 40 pounds.

Jail will take you out one way or the other.

Avoid it at all costs!

It is inhumane.

Prisoner's Rights Matter.

Improve Prison Reform.

Mental Health Matters.

Prevent Not Punish.

~Natasha BYTS