Rats, Insects and Mold: How Bad Food Leaves Prisoners Hungry and Sick

Filed
12:00 p.m. EDT

05.16.2026

Georgia spends about 60 cents per meal for prisoners. One man described it as ‘Being hungry on a regular basis, and being fed slop.’

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The meals on the trays doesn’t even appear to be meals. In photographs smuggled out of Georgia’s prisons, what passes for a meal is both grossly insufficient for a grown man, unrecognizable sludge, or each.

“There is not any doable approach you might survive off what they feed you,” mentioned Bailey, who’s at present incarcerated in Georgia and requested The Marshall Venture to withhold his full title for concern of retaliation from workers. He and different individuals behind bars within the state recount seeing rats within the kitchen and bugs within the meals, and being served meals on trays caked with mould. “The extent of malnourished individuals again right here would have you ever torn between sick and disgusted.”

The Georgia state jail system is awash in stabbings, beatings and demise, with “near-constant, life-threatening violence functioning because the norm,” the Division of Justice wrote in 2024. Locks don’t work. Staffing is “grossly insufficient.” However one underlying reason for the acute hazard, say advocates, prisoners and their households, is the meals.

“Being hungry on a regular basis, and being fed slop — you’ve gotta consider individuals get pissed off, particularly over years and years of this. That frustration results in violence,” mentioned Bernard Christian of the grassroots advocacy group Georgia Prisoners Converse.

The issue is getting worse, in keeping with a current evaluation by the group. They discovered that funding for meals within the state’s corrections price range is roughly flat yr over yr, at the same time as jail populations rise and inflation means the identical price range buys much less meals. Per particular person, Georgia spent about $1.69 a day in 2024, and has proposed to spend $1.60 a day of their 2027 price range — lower than 60 cents per meal. Against this, the Meals and Drug Administration’s “thrifty plan” estimates that feeding an grownup man “a nutritious, sensible, cost-effective eating regimen” prices about $10 per day.

Travis, at present serving time in a Georgia state jail, says that individuals are so hungry that they steal meals from the kitchen, leaving these on the chow line with even smaller parts. “You’ll be able to really feel the stress within the air when stuff like this occurs,” mentioned Travis, who additionally requested us to make use of his nickname as a result of he fears retaliation by Georgia corrections officers. Travis mentioned he was not too long ago recognized with gum illness, which his well being care suppliers attributed to malnutrition.

Georgia spends about 14 instances extra on medical care than on meals for the individuals in its prisons, a $432 million invoice that Georgia Prisoners Converse describes as “what the State pays to deal with the illness that underfeeding produces.” Definitely, one reason for sky-high medical prices is the rampant violence — hospitalizations from stabbings and beatings are expensive — however poor diets may end in excessive charges of continual sickness. Nationwide, individuals in jail have greater charges of most sicknesses, however maladies like hypertension and diabetes could be triggered — and worsened — by poor eating regimen.

The Georgia corrections division’s meals system is state-run, however for-profit jail meals contractors comprise a worthwhile and rising business. The most important participant, by far, is Aramark, which feeds a whole lot of hundreds of prisoners in seventeen states, in keeping with a brand new report by the Heart for Science within the Public Curiosity. The corporate additionally providers stadiums, universities and hospitals, however their correctional contracts alone have been value $1.78 billion in income in 2024, in keeping with a market evaluation. The report discovered that Aramark’s contracts are plagued with comparable issues in most of the locations the corporate operates: unappetizing meals, insufficient portion sizes, spoiled and contaminated meals. A number of states have cancelled contracts with Aramark due to accusations of “serving rotten and spoiled meals” and unsanitary situations, resulting in outbreaks of foodborne sickness. Even in these circumstances, the researchers discovered, states are paying Aramark between $3 and $7 per particular person per day — six to 14 instances greater than Georgia is spending to feed the individuals in its prisons.

Up to now, the most important jail system to have privatized its meals providers is the Florida Division of Corrections, which incarcerates greater than 80,000 individuals. However it might quickly lose that title.

Late final Friday evening, hours after authorities workplaces had closed for the weekend, the federal Bureau of Prisons posted a request for info on the federal contracting web site SAM.gov. The request learn, “searching for info from certified distributors able to offering enterprise-wide meals service operations throughout all Bureau of Prisons-managed establishments nationwide.” Federal prisons maintain greater than 140,000 individuals in additional than 122 services, from Honolulu to rural New Hampshire and in all places in between. There has by no means been a jail meals contract that huge. “Nothing even shut,” mentioned Dan Rosen, of the Carceral Vitamin Venture, a nonprofit that co-authored the current report with The Heart for Science within the Public Curiosity and goals to extend the standard of meals in U.S. prisons and jails. “It will be an enormous effort for any of those corporations.”

To complement meager meals, prisoners in Georgia and in different jail techniques depend on the commissary, the place cash obtained from family members, or earned a couple of pennies at a time in jail jobs, should purchase ramen, chips, and different overpriced, ultraprocessed meals. And if the Bureau of Prisons follows by way of, these purchases can even add to some company backside line: federal jail officers are trying into privatizing the commissary, too.