Experts claim prison food is better than in hospitals

Another example of how criminals are treated like kings while the rest of us pay for it.
news.bbc.co.uk...

[edit on 30-8-2009 by SpaceMonkeys]

Prison in my mind should be a place where one would prefer living on the streets than in there.

When the punishment is shelter, food, and relatively stable living conditions, no wonder so many people commit crimes.

Don't even get me started on the justice system regarding punishment...

Not just prisoners, when my wife and I were first married, we visited some of her family in Indiana. To make a long story short, they excelled at doing nothing. They worked at unemployment, mock disabilities, you name it.

My wife and I both worked. We had one crappy car, shared a small house with 5 million mice, and two very disappointing cats, had no cable, ate two meals a day but were happy.

They had a huge HUD home, a car someone gave them, three tvs with cable and food over stuffed in their fridge.

Needless to say, we didn't stay long (we had to get back to work) but it never left me, the stuff they had for nothing, they didn't earn a darn thing, they treated it all like garbage.

when we got back to our little pile of trash, I appreciated every light switch (we paid the bills) every noise our beater car made (it was paid for) and wondered how they could ever appreciate anything.

So what makes them experts? Are they career criminals who get sick a lot?

Prison, in my opinion, should be about rehabilitation, not punishment. Most people don't change as a result of being punished. Their criminality becomes worse. They become dehumanizeed, angry, worsened. As it is, prison is a horror show where you can easily be raped, beaten, even killed. Not many people prefer it to the streets. But unless you give these people tools to help them do something besides hurt and steal, they'll just come out and do it again.

It is especially tragic that the majority of inmates are convicted of non-violent crimes. They go into prison as more-or-less normal people, but often come out as dangerous, well-trained, and vindictive criminals.

Punishment doesn't work. Even harsh punishment doesn't work. Our recidivism rates are among the worst in the world, despite our prisons violating our own human rights standards. It's not for lack of punishment. It's because punishment doesn't work.

The only way to avoid recidivism is to either help people to rehabilitate, or execute them. What we're doing now simply doesn't work, and it never has.

Anyway, I don't think this study is showing that prison food is so great. It's not. It's pretty bad. All it's showing is that hospital food is even worse than prison food, which is probably fairly accurate. If hospital food is similar in quality to hospital medical care, then it's poison.

Punishment doesn't work. Even harsh punishment doesn't work. Our recidivism rates are among the worst in the world, despite our prisons violating our own human rights standards. It's not for lack of punishment. It's because punishment doesn't work.

With good food, t.v.s, recreation areas etc. it's not like prison used to be when our crime rates were lower.

I know a guy whose been in and out of prison several times, he says he can do the time standing on his head! It does not bother him a bit to go to jail.

We need alot more chaingangs. Make them work hard all the time so they will be glad for their freedom when they finally get it.

While it is shameful that the quality of hospital food is so low I personally have no problem with the quality of prison food being reasonable. It doesn't need to taste or look good but prisoners should get a nutritional balanced diet otherwise its simply inhumane. One benefit of giving inmates a good diet is that it lowers violence.

Antisocial behaviour in prisons, including violence, are reduced by vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids with similar implications for those eating poor diets in the community.

SOURCE

One thing I dislike about the report is the unnecessary comparison between hospital food and prison food. I cant help but think it's being used to encourage a knee jerk reaction in the reader. To me the real story is that hospital food isn't good enough.

Originally posted by CuriosityStrikes

Antisocial behaviour in prisons, including violence, are reduced by vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids with similar implications for those eating poor diets in the community.

Another waste of taxpayers cash



[edit on 8/30/2009 by altered_states]

reply to post by chiron613


How on earth can you say punishment doesnt work when it's never tried? Prisons in the UK are an absolute joke and there are many examples of this and the government is just giving criminals a holiday with sky tv a pool table and a chat with their mates on how to be better criminals. Cant people see that the government is in fact promoting crime so they can say crime figures are getting worse and the sollution is to have more cameras and control of our basic freedoms.

Why do we have people trying to dictate what a judge or jury is to decide? Sure, we could punish people with bad food. We could force them to eat their own excrement for example. Show me though where the judge ruled that this was to be part of their punishment? If the prisoners have TV & extra food then that is fine, because the judge never specified no TV or bad food in their verdict. And the fact of the matter is if you do actually take steps to undermine the justice system and add extra punishment such as bad food on top of the verdict it is somewhat sadistic.

I'd have vote no to the bad food punishment because withholding nutrition is damaging to the body. A good portion of prisoners have sick minds already who are in prison. What they need is the most nutritious possible meals so that they can better return to society with a healthier mind when they are released. While I agree prisoners should not be getting junk food, they do need fruits, vegetables, and sufficient calories in their diet for the purpose of rehabilitation.

If you really want to see prisoners suffer beyond their verdict, I suggest you sign up as a prison guard and kick prisoners in the kidney because "they deserve it" if you are so hateful and resentful of them.

reply to post by SpaceMonkeys


So much for European Government run health care system. I can't wait till Obama, inflicts this upon the American people...

Do the prisoners work in industry? If so, there is a profit motive for keeping them somewhat healthy.

reply to post by Gateway


I was thinking the same thing. My wife is in medicine and I can tell you they do not feed the residents as well as the patients...already.

That said, perhaps an option exists:

Open a McDonald’s inside the hospital, just as we have here in Texas, at the St. Luke’s Heart Institute!

What a joke.


mg

This useless research highlights the obvious, that sick people often don't feel like eating and so, as stressed in the article, do not get enough.
I call it useless as it gives no remedy. My solution is an intravenous drip of nutrients which I do not believe has been formulated to date.