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Alabama sheriff arrested for failing to adequately feed inmates

Kandahar

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Federal judge arrests Ala. sheriff over jail food - Yahoo! News

DECATUR, Ala. – A federal judge ordered an Alabama sheriff locked up in his own jail Wednesday after holding him in contempt for failing to adequately feed inmates while profiting from the skimpy meals.

U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon had court security arrest Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett after dramatic testimony from skinny prisoners about paper-thin bologna and cold grits. The hearing offered a rare look into Alabama's unusual practice of letting sheriffs pocket money left over from feeding inmates.

The sheriff, who showed no emotion when his arrest was ordered, had testified that he legally kept as personal income about $212,000 over three years with surplus meal money but denied that inmates were improperly fed.

Sheriffs in 55 of Alabama's 67 counties operate under the system allowing them to make money operating their jail kitchens. The law pays sheriffs $1.75 a day for each prisoner they house and lets the elected officers pocket any profit they can generate.

The law doesn't require the leftover money to be spent at the jail or within the department; sheriffs can keep it as personal income. They historically have provided little information about profits under the practice that dates back to the Depression.

I can't even begin to imagine what they were thinking when they wrote this law. Did no one anticipate that things like this would happen?
 
Wow, never heard of such a thing. On a side note prisons are a prime place for employees to get away with shady practices and illegal activity. Who's going to believe the prisoner?
 
Yea, of all the different areas where you want to incentivize efficient spending (I'm assuming that was the original goal), providing food to a captive audience isn't really one of them.
 
I disagree with letting the sheriff pocket the extra money. I however think the only thing inmates deserve to eat is bread and water. So if a sheriff is going to feed the inmate meager rations then it should be done because that is what he feels the inmates deserve, not because he can pocket the savings.
 
Some of the responses to this thread are rather sickening.
 
Having spent a fair amount of time within the criminal justice system, specifically relating to a county jail, I can tell you that this kind of thing probably goes on a lot more than we think. The problem is that this Sheriff will not likely have to suffer the same treatment his inmates did.

The whole bread and water comment is just a snapshot as to why this nation will continue to throw billions of dollars a year into a failing criminal justice system and not bat an eye. But that is for another thread.
 
Wow, do they let the school teachers keep the extra cash they save on student textbooks?
Not in the government schools. They just hire another administrator.
 
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