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Well, religious diets are arguably not voluntary. I'd say it's far different to allow a Kosher meal than it is to plan, purchase, prep, and serve a special diet to one inmate who has a preference of diet because that is how they chose to eat on the outside.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Religious diets are not voluntary, but choice of religion is voluntary. Vegetarian/vegan diets adhering to an ethical philosophy are not voluntary, but choosing to accept an animal rights philosophy is voluntary. Either both are a choice or neither are a choice, depending on how you define your terms. Now, if the vegan diet was for personal taste or even for health reason…
Care to elaborate on this? Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but I cannot see how a religious diet is not voluntary. Surely someone on a religious diet could eat certain foods if they choose to or not, no?
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Which makes the whole discussion rather bizarre. So you don't want meat slop on beans and rice, fine, take two scoops of rice and beans instead without the slop. Don't want pancakes and bacon, fine, take an extra pancake instead. If the servers won't cooperate, trade a slice of bacon to your neighbor in exchange for a pancake. I suppose you could intentionally sabotage someone by putting bacon in with the beans, so j…
Someone's been watching too much Hollywood. That's not how food inside works. Your meal is selected for you and given to you in a container, depending on facility. Some prisons have a system similar to what you describe, but inmates' hands are not on the serving equipment and you're only saying "yes"/"no" to things. The facility has strict counts of calories to maintain and putting a serving spoon in the hand of an i…
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Because one of them is an earnestly held belief and the other is you lying to get special treatment, and humans are capable of telling the difference. See the bit above about using common sense and not being a mindless rule-applying robot. Also, because people who request kosher, halal, vegetarian, or vegan diets in prison aren't generally demanding higher-quality food, just different food. When accommodated, they ge…
So before I go to prison, I should earnestly develop a sincere desire for, say, pancakes every day, then it'd count? I understand that law interpreters are not mindless robots. However it seems very arbitrary to support kosher and halal, but not Pastafarian diets. It's as silly as only granting conscientious objector status to "real" Mennonites.
The thing is, you're not going to do that, and neither is anyone else. Policy should not be guided by ridiculous hypotheticals.
>There was no concern for his vegan diet I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to accommodate voluntary diets like this.
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> The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime. Prison serves many purposes other than punishment - one of which is rehabilitation. Making someone's life miserable for several years, purely to punish them, does nothing in the long-run - hence why re-offending rates can be so high.
Two orthogonal factors undermine your observation: (1) the prison system is drifting toward private, for-profit prisons, and rehabilitating offenders incarcerated therein would be damaging to the long-term profits of the institution, and (2) believe it or not, a significant number of inmates in the American system do not want to be rehabilitated, which is directly linked to various external factors. It's easy for tho…
Your tone, knowledge of the subject, and general skill at writing imply you're quite intelligent, so what did you do to get a felony conviction?
It's pretty rich that almost this entire thread is arguing about the prison not respecting Sunde's vegan wishes and his personal wealth and ideals. There are more than ninety comments here and all of them hang off nearly-dead comments. The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime. Louis CK has a bit about this in one of his recent specials: ...but we really need…
So no, the 'point of prison' isn't 'to suck'. That's an overly simplistic view of the issue.
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I seriously doubt quality of food is a factor in reoffending rates.
And you're wrong. Food quality is a small piece of the big puzzle of how prisoners are treated, which obviously affects how they will reintegrate in society, which is something that recidivism rates measure. Prisons should not be about punishing people. Punishment would lead to just more drain on society. I would have hoped we'd have outgrown this childish yearn for revenge in the 21st century.
Does anyone know which state prisons have a gluten free option? I need to figure out where to commit my next offense.
Sure. If you have celiac disease, try California. Your doctor can write you a note so that you don't have to eat food that could be debilitating or life-threatening. Simple health issues aside, it's a weird fact I have trouble wrapping my head around that there's an uncrossable chasm between people who think prisoners should be given some measure of dignity and people who find the very idea laughable. I would just wi…
I am a meat eater, but this whole discussion is laughable in many ways. I think veganism is a healthy conviction. Stepping on that is likely to just make people more angry and feel more alienated by the system.
A bit unrelated: Back in the days when I had no money at all I lived on rice, pasta, beans, broccoli, cabbage and an occasional glass of milk for 3 months (meat is expensive, at least when your budget is about 1 euro a day) without getting any notable deficiencies (went to see a doctor when I got money). If you provide means for someone to get B12 and calcium (while serving legumes daily) there wouldn't be much trouble catering to vegan needs.
>There was no concern for his vegan diet I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to accommodate voluntary diets like this.
My vegetarian friends say that they literally can't eat meat any more, in the sense that their stomach physiology (acids? bacteria? not sure) isn't capable of digesting it. Yes, it was voluntary at some point, but it's not clear that you can still apply that label. As someone with food allergies, I could understand (and be unhappy) if a captor decided to feed me allergens as intentional punishment, but I'd be pretty…
It took about a month of slowly introducing meat before I was back to normal. There are others that made the switch cold turkey without problems though.