Prisoners caged in lockups where Aramark provides the food service rarely enthuse about great quality meals. So it may come as a surprise that an employee of the firm’s German subsidiary won a Next Chef Award on March 11, 2024. After tasting a dish that TV chef Johan Lauffer created, ...

by David M. Reutter

A settlement approved by the federal court for the Eastern District of California on January 16, 2024, recalls an all-­too familiar jail story. A wheelchair-­bound detainee named Gregory Cantu was denied anti-­seizure medication after arriving at Kings County Jail in Hanford on a probation violation. Despite ...

by David M. Reutter

A headline in the August 1965 edition of The Daily Oklahoman said that then-Sheriff Bob Turner of Oklahoma County “denies his jail’s ‘deplorable.’” A new jail was later built, but almost six decades later, a surprise inspection of the lockup in downtown Oklahoma City by the ...

by David M. Reutter

Much has been made of the “food desert” where America’s poorest citizens live: inner-city ghettos and rural backwaters where no grocery store is found, forcing impoverished residents—most lacking a car—to shop for food in high-priced and poorly-stocked gas stations and convenience stores.

But prisons also house ...