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Stan* discusses meals
Orange County Jail Interview
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
Jail Media: Let’s talk about meals – do you get three meals per day?
Stan Smith: Yeah, you get three meals. The one good thing about Orange County is that it is actually real food, too – it’s not like the slop you will get at some other jails, but you still don’t get fed enough.
Jail Media: What time do they wake you up for breakfast?
Stan Smith: 4:30 in the morning. 4:30 is breakfast, 11 o’clock is lunch and 4:30 in the afternoon is dinner.
Jail Media: So you’re probably starving by night time?
Stan Smith: Yeah, that’s why I was saying you have to have money – if you don’t have money to get commissary you have to go twelve hours without eating – that’s a long time.
Jail Media: Do people take the food and save it for later?
Stan Smith: Actually, you can’t do it – the cops won’t allow it. Some people try to make what they call “prunal” in there – it’s liquor.
Jail Media: How do they make it?
Stan Smith: Rotten fruit and bread.
Jail Media: That’s disgusting.
Stan Smith: Yes, disgusting…
Jail Media: Having been to LA and Orange County Jail how would you rank the food in Orange County?
Stan Smith: It’s a lot better. It’s ten times better than LA.
Jail Media: Were there any particular meals that inmates looked forward to that were especially good meals?
Stan Smith: No, not really. Dinner might change – it might be spaghetti or something like that and another night might be meatloaf, but breakfast was always the same. It was always eggs and potatoes.
Jail Media: Was there any slang for meals?
Stan Smith: No, we just called them meals.
Jail Media: Did people ever gamble their meals away? That is common in some other facilities.
Stan Smith: No, they would gamble their commissary, but not their actual meals because the cops watch the inmates eat.
Jail Media: Can you share anything? I mean, if you didn’t want something could you give it to another inmate?
Stan Smith: Yeah, you can do that – you just have to keep it low-profile, as long as the cops aren’t watching you’re alright.
Jail Media: So I’m guessing they don’t offer any kind of snacks outside of the normal meals?
Stan Smith: You just have to buy commissary.
Jail Media: How much money per week would you recommend an inmate spend to have enough commissary to avoid starving? How much should somebody plan on spending?
Stan Smith: Probably about twenty bucks per week. But don’t get me wrong, there are guys in there who would spend like $200 per week.
Jail Media: So they didn’t have any kind of limit on how much you could buy?
Stan Smith: Yeah, there was some kind of limit but it was like, you could only get 50 of one thing and 50 from another. I believe it’s the head sheriff’s daughter who owns the commissary company.
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