Everything that goes into a woman’s mouth in Perryville comes from this for-profit vendor. The only exception is if she’s lucky enough to have 3 food visits per year, or wealthy enough to afford fundraiser food.
Trinity is a big player in the prison industry’s “profiteers” that make money off mass incarceration. The only other serious competitors in America are Aramark and ABL Food Services.
The USDA pegs the average cost per meal on the “Thrifty Food Plan” as $3.34 per meal for an adult male. How does Trinity do it for less than half at $1.74? Small portions! We’ve written about toddler-sized meals before on this blog. The other way they cheap out is their heavy carbohydrates menu. According to one weekly menu we found, it consists of 7 servings of potatoes, 11 breads (rolls and biscuits too), and 12 servings of cake, muffins, or cookies.
If you folks out there wonder what happens to the stalks on broccoli….. rest assured it was put on your loved one’s tray in prison. Meat protein is scarcer than hen’s teeth. Prison “shmeat” is made of 75% mechanically separated poultry and 25% texturized vegetable protein.
Many inmates have tried and failed, to hold Trinity accountable for abhorrent sanitation that would get a commercial kitchen shut down anywhere else in the country. There are so many litigation hurdles for prisoners, that they fail on procedural grounds before they get to court.
So, yes, the Perryville women are hungry for justice….or just hungry.