‘Johnny sacks’ of mystery meat
Prison food getting worse in pandemic
Prison food is notoriously bad, even in the best of times. This isn’t the best of times, especially in the 40-plus Texas prisons where people are locked in their cells all the time because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Their food now arrives at odd hours in paper bags, cold, mushy and without a hint of green (except perhaps for some iffy-looking hot dogs). Mostly it’s stale white bread and mystery meat, with the occasional helping of raisins or prunes.
This is what people inside have been telling The Marshall Project since the first of the COVID-19-related lockdowns began in early April. To prove their point, the prisoners started sending out photos.
An official manual outlines the recommended calories for
“The conditions are so bad in here, it seems third world.” Letter from a prison inmate to his fiancée
“wholesome and nutritious” meals, and includes a narrow assortment of suggested items that sound palatable. But in the prisoners’ pictures, the sloppy joes look like peanut butter sandwiches, except for the corn kernels. The hot dogs are wrapped in smushed white bread, the milk comes in powdered form and there is no semblance of a fresh fruit or vegetable.
But even though it doesn’t look like food most people would want to eat, prisoners and their families say they’re not getting enough of it. They say they are going to bed hungry.
“The conditions are so bad in here, it seems third world,” one man wrote to his fiancée. “The nutrition is far from adequate especially for COVID-positive inmates. You would think we would at least be given vegetables and hearty protein, something with a vitamin content.”
A prison spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The quality of prison food in Texas took a nosedive in 2011 when officials tried to make up a budget shortage by cutting $2.8 million from the allotment for meals. One document described the planned changes: replacing hot dog and hamburger buns with white bread, substituting milk powder for fresh milk, and feeding inmates only twice a day on weekends at certain facilities.
Prisoners noticed and sent a petition to the American Civil Liberties Union.
It didn’t do any good.
Not only did the regular food get markedly worse, so did the lockdown meals. Every time a Texas prison locks down— whether it’s for a weekslong contraband search, an unexpected disturbance or a mass quarantine—the mess halls close. Bagged lunches known as “johnny sacks” replace cafeteria meals.
Now, every time someone inside tests positive for the novel coronavirus, the entire prison it placed on lockdown for at least two weeks and everyone gets johnnies.
The upshot is that by early May, thousands of incarcerated people had not seen sunlight or eaten a warm meal in weeks. Many said they’d had only sporadic access to phones, mail and showers.
In theory, the johnnies include a breakfast — typically boiled eggs, dry cereal and raisins. Lunch and dinner consist of two sandwiches per meal — a chicken or beef patty, mystery meat or peanut butter, which prisoners say is sometimes diluted with cooking oil.
“The johnny sacks are very bad,” Theodore “Cigo” Crews, 73, an inmate at the Estelle unit in Huntsville, wrote in a letter to his daughter.
Once, he said, “We only got a foam cup of BBQ chopped beef. That’s all.”
Crews is serving a 20-year sentence for aggravated assault.
“We will not die by COVID19 but we die by hunger!! TRUTH!” he wrote.
After looking at the pictures (which did not come from Crews or anyone at his unit), a former prison official confirmed they appeared to be Texas prison johnny sacks.
“They’ve always been subpar,” the ex-official said.
Although each prison is required to set aside a sample of each meal for three days in case there are later questions about the quality of the food, the former official said those samples aren’t always representative of what is actually served to inmates.
Prisoners in locked-down units say their food has been arriving at weird times. One told his mother he’d received breakfast—two boiled eggs and a peanut butter sandwich—at 3 a.m. His next packet of sandwiches didn’t arrive until 4 p.m.
Weeks after the lockdowns began, prison officials told family advocacy organizations that they would begin offering occasional treats from the commissary. One prisoner reported his treat had arrived: a single peppermint stick.