BREAKFAST IN BED - SHOULD GUARDS DELIVER PRISONER MEALS TO CELLS?

Since early 2020, inmate meals have been served in Styrofoam trays in each of the units or individual dayrooms rather than sending inmates to eat in the dining room (chow hall). Food is delivered to each unit on large carts, prisoners are called, and in single file, they walk by the cart and pick a tray (or 2) while staff "supervise" the procession. However, when a tier is locked down for one reason or another (which is occurring more and more often these days) staff have no problems wheeling the large cart into the tier to deliver trays to each cell.

First, delivering food to the units is much more security conscious than is stuffing hundreds of inmates from different units into the chow hall where contraband is routinely passed and fights between inmates housed in different areas of the prison . yet eat together - are common. Staff responding to the assaults are literally surrounded and seriously outnumbered by frustrated prisoners during chow hall fights, with backup officers sometimes as much as a quarter mile away.

Delivering trays to each cell has significantly more benefits than does even the generalized (dayroom or foyer) on-unit feeding. There can be no question as to whether or not each prisoner in the cell has been fed, and there is less chance of prisoners taking more than one meal (a common complaint of food service staff). Special diets can be more easily managed, and it takes only a single officer to feed an entire unit - even without inmate assistance in delivering food (which they almost always use, despite rules prohibiting same).

Once trays are delivered, inmates can be allowed out of their cells to microwave the meals which are often cold and coagulated from having sat in the food service staging area or the hallway for extended periods of time. They can then eat their meals at the dayroom tables as usual, or simply eat their meals in their cell if they prefer.

Any argument that in-cell feeding would be more taxing on staff than the methods currently employed is not only incorrect, it must be measured against the mantra spouted by IDOC staff when their logic and arguments fail... "Security is Never Convenient."

For more details on feeding prisoners in the ISCC chow hall, see the post SATELLITE FEEDING AT THE ISCC - A BETTER WAY TO SECURITY AND SOCIAL DISTANCING on this site.

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