I used to teach college courses in jail. No, not as an inmate. As an adjunct professor.
"Jail is the best I've ever had it," said one of my penitentiary students. The other inmates in my remedial health science class looked at him with surprise equal to my own. One of them asked how that could possibly be.
He answered, "Because in jail I have a bed, a roof over my head, and three meals a day."
Makes you think, doesn't it? From the bottom of the barrel it can be a long climb out.
During one class, I was lecturing on human nutrition. I mentioned foods that are especially wholesome, such as leafy vegetables, legumes (peas, beans lentils), whole grains, wheat germ and such. To spark class interest, I asked what foods the prisoners were fed. White bread, meat, potatoes and sugar was the general consensus.
"What about vitamin supplements?" I asked.
"No. They never give 'em to us," came the reply. "Got to buy them yourself, at the commissary store. They just got multiple vitamin pills there. Gotta buy them with your own money."
I mentioned that a multiple vitamin each day would be a good idea for every inmate. They listened. I said that, really, three multis a day would be even better: one with each meal.
Fifteen years ago, the BBC reported that a double-blind, placebo-controlled study found that adding vitamins to the diets of inmates at a maximum security institution cut offenses by 25%. The greatest reduction was for serious offenses, including violence, which fell by 40%. There was no such reduction for those on placebos.
The researchers said that improving diets could be a cost-effective way of reducing crime in the community and also reducing the prison population. To quote lead study author Bernard Gesch, "the improvement was huge."
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Their corrective nutrition needed to happen in their informative development as youths.
ReplyDeleteIt should be mandatory in schools until college graduation. The conspiracy theories would go through the roof.
ReplyDeleteThe public needs to know information like this. The lack of basic health care and horrible nutritional standards for inmates in Maryland prisons is unbelievable. Three pieces of white bread and a slice of slimy bologna is not an adequate meal for anyone. Poor nutrition causes serious health problems, but those health issues are not addressed either. Last year, my son's cellmate died in the cell from an untreated liver condition. He was not given mediation or any other treatment; we would do more for those incarcerated at Guantanamo than we do for American citizens in prison. This is not an altruistic argument; these inmates will be released with serious health problems that will be far worse because they were not addressed from the beginning, Who will pay for their health care when they are released? American taxpayers, of course. It is curious that in this age of protecting the vulnerable that our politicians have little concern for more than two million citizens in prison. These inmates are our sons and daughters, our fathers and mothers, our friends and neighbors. They are paying for their crimes by serving their time; why should they have to pay with their health and ultimately their lives?
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