Vermont inmates call food foul, sue over it

[Mugu]

By WILSON RING Associated Press
Via MSNBC

MONTPELIER, Vt. - When shooting suspect Christopher Williams acted up in prison, he was given nutraloaf — a mixture of cubed whole wheat bread, nondairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and dehydrated potato flakes. Prison officials call it a complete meal. Inmates say it's so awful they'd rather go hungry.

On Monday, the Vermont Supreme Court will hear arguments in a class-action suit brought by inmates who say it's not food but punishment and that anyone subjected to it should get a formal disciplinary process first.

Prison officials see nutraloaf as a tool for behavior modification. "It's commonplace in other states as a way of providing nutrition in a mechanism that dissuades inmates from throwing feces, urine, trays and silverware," said Vermont Corrections Commissioner Rob Hofmann.

"It tends to have the desired outcome," Hofmann said. "Once the offender relents, we stop with the nutraloaf. That's our goal, to protect our staff and not have them subjected to behavior that the average Vermonter would find incomprehensible."


Complete article at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23761712/

[Tippy]

1. This is sick besides being totaly gross

I wonder if.......... Corrections Commissioner Rob Hofmann. Has sampled this slop?

[kestrel91316]

2. Look, if the inmates in question HAVE been throwing urine and feces,

they should be thankful this is all the punishment they get.

Prison ain't the Ritz, and if you act up in there, they can't exactly send you to jail as punishment.

[High Plains]

3. But they can't torture you, either.

Forcing someone to eat that crap may just qualify.

Clearly, the prison officials are using it as a weapon.

[NutmegYankee]

4. That isn't torture.

torture

noun
1. extreme mental distress
2. unbearable physical pain
3. intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain; "an agony of doubt"; "the torments of the damned"
4. the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean
5. the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason; "it required unnatural torturing to extract a confession"


It's just crappy food.

[kestrel91316]

5. And it's not even crappy food. It's just a crappy recipe.

cubed whole wheat bread
nondairy cheese
raw carrots
spinach
seedless raisins
beans
vegetable oil
tomato paste
powdered milk
dehydrated potato flakes

Except for the potato flakes and non-dairy cheese, I consider all of these part of a very healthy diet, don't you? And the potato flakes really are fine - I just don't keep highly processed convenience foods around.

The non-dairy cheese is another matter entirely. I've had it, and it is banned permanently from my home. THAT could be considered cruel and unusual punishment among some, but check with the vegan crowd first.

Oh, and before you get your panties in a wad about beans and raisins together, I made a very tasty Pinto Bean Fudge a couple of years ago that I put raisins and nuts in and it was to die for.

[NutmegYankee]

8. I was saying crappy as in - Yuck!

I'm sure it is nutritious.

[kestrel91316]

11. I bet they serve it cold, too.

But if it were the only thing available, I'd eat it and mind my manners the next time around.

Every 4-yr-old knows if you throw poop at somebody you are gonna get SERIOUS consequences.

[HereSince1628]

12. Looking at the ingredients I'd say it's unusual punishment...

now 50 states doing the same thing might make it seem common.

But I think there is an issue that can be argued.

[Rage for Order]

6. You obviously have no idea what torutre is

Giving someone crappy-tasting food is not torture.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1995/08/06/RV35197.DTL

``In Manchuria . . . Unit 731 . . . did experiments on human beings. . . . Some were infected with disease: cholera, typhoid, anthrax, plague, syphilis. Others were cut up alive to see what happened in successive stages of hemorrhagic fever. Others had their blood siphoned off and replaced by horse blood. Others were shot, burned with flamethrowers, blown up with shrapnel and left to develop gas gangrene, bombarded with lethal doses of X rays, whirled to death in giant centrifuges, subjected to high pressure in sealed chambers until their eyes popped from their sockets, electrocuted, dehydrated, frozen, boiled alive.''

[pop goes the weasel]

9. how many inmates are being punished

for the "crime" of being mentally ill? Throwing feces and urine is not something that mentally healthy people do. Under the stress of prison, it seems likely that a lot of even previously mentally stable people would break, and the legions of prisoners who were far from stable to begin with would flip right over to full-fledged break-downs. Are prisoners who "act out" first evaluated before punishment? Are they able to fully control their own behaviors?

Sure, there will be some inmates who are simply acting up. One would hope an evaluation would discriminate between the two.

If there were clear avenues in prison to gaining better conditions, treatment, and some modicum of respect as a human being, perhaps there would be fewer "acting out" episodes, less violence, and less recidivism. But it isn't like even the best behaved prisoners are going to be given privacy and some control over their environment, which are the main things that anyone would want. Our harshly punitive society has no problem with people spending decades of their lives in hell holes even for non-violent crimes. For some odd reason, we don't consider simply cutting a person off from family, friends, freedom of movement and association, and freedom of preference to be in itself harsh.

[wolfgangmo]

7. I'm a prison officer...

... and serving another type of nutritious food to get a prisoner to stop throwing feces, sperm, urine and other fun substances at staff seems OK to me. Let's face it this is a food that is nutritious, can be delivered to a cell quickly and allows the prisoner time to cool down without depriving him of necessary nutrition.

What is the problems here?

This is neither torture nor cruel and unusual punishment. Get a grip folks.

Would you put up with someone throwing feces at you at your job, or would you call the cops? In prison we don't call the cops, we figure out how to help that inmate get control without endangering them, us, or other prisoners.

[pop goes the weasel]

10. I'm sorry for you guys

Guards don't make the rules but have to enforce them, no matter whether they make any over-arching sense or whether they contribute to the behavior they are supposed to curb. I salute you and your comrades who maintain your sense of humanity and self-control under such conditions.

[HereSince1628]

13. I get the issue of unusual punishment. Clearly it is intended as a punishment.

And typically punishment is applied as a consequence of some decision making process. There seems to be a question about the process of that determination.

I am wondering what exactly makes it usual. I think I'm far from alone in never having heard of this.