Are Clark County Jail meal requests kosher?

Due to that added expense, and the rise in requests, the cost to feed the jail population is budgeted to rise from $1.8 million in the 2011-12 budget to $2.5 million in 2013-14.

It’s a scenario that puts the county in a tough bind, both financially and legally. Kosher meals cost more to make, and federal law requires jails across the country to cater to the religious dietary requests of their inmates.

“It’s the subject of much litigation across the United States,” said Joseph Barnett, custody branch commander. “The inmates still have constitutional rights, and they still have religious rights. If they submit a request in writing, then we provide a religious meal. We’re following the law.”

So as requests go up, the county provides. And as the county provides, costs go up.

Why the increase? Here’s one theory

Gary Friedman, a former Jewish corrections chaplain based in Seattle, considers himself to be a leading authority on dietary rules and regulations in the United States corrections system. He suspects the rise in Clark County follows a national trend where many of the kosher requests come from a belief based on misguided views on meal safety, not on religion.

“The primary motivation is, they think it’s safer,” Friedman said. “I can’t count how many times it’s happened, how many times it has come up, that you hear stories how (jails) buy food that is out of date or how inmate workers are tainting the food. So they think (kosher meals) are safer and it is of better quality.”

Friedman uses an example from Pierce County where an inmate requested a kosher meal and was denied. A recorded phone call between the inmate and his mother showed that the request came over concern there would be spit in the regular meals.

And while religious meals must be provided to those with sincere religious beliefs, the law doesn’t provide for sanitary concerns.

“I can confirm that we started to have an increase about a year-and-a-half ago,” said corrections spokeswoman Angela Dice.” But I don’t have any numbers (from that time frame) to indicate the size of the increase.”

Question of sincerity

Legally, the counties can’t deny a request outright, even if they suspect the reason for the request isn’t religious in nature. But many folks wonder how many are legitimate requests and how many follow Friedman’s hypothesis. After all, there doesn’t seem to be a drastic increase in the Jewish population outside the county jail.

“I don’t think there have been many people (from the jail), at least that I am aware, that have requested to convert,” said Vancouver Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg. “What I am saying is, (Friedman) has a point.”

But jail staff know while some inmates mask their intentions for a meal, that doesn’t mean the sincerely devout should suffer. It leaves corrections departments with a difficult proposition when it comes to judging who is or isn’t telling the truth.

“I’m thinking more and more the way to do it is to give them the diet and then monitor them,” Friedman said. “You monitor their store purchases, see what they do in terms of bartering … and then you have cause to take them off of the diet. It’s really difficult for them to assess somebody upfront.”

Clark County currently follows that practice in determining which inmates are sincere.

“If an inmate is exhibiting behaviors inconsistent with their stated beliefs, then there can be an administrative hearing and it can be taken away,” Barnett said. “We have about two or three of those hearings each week.”

The other way to mitigate the problem is to reduce costs. But that, too, is a tough option.

“What happens is, (jails) make the meals as unattractive as possible and as paltry as possible, and (it affects) the people who are sincere and actually require it,” Friedman said. “It also confirms to inmates that they can play those games.”

Rouhier points out that the inmate population has declined since last year’s projection, and notes there are indicators that food prices are stabilizing.

Still, he says he recognizes the cost to cater meals for the jail’s population definitely isn’t going down, and it’s likely the requests for religious meals will continue to rise.

He gives credit to Food Services Manager Joe Loftgren for finding ways to decrease the costs of meals for both standard and special diets, which include the religious meals, as well as medical and dietary restricted plates.

Containing costs

Loftgren is the guy who fretted over milk prices rising at the end of last year as the U.S. Congress debated an extension to the farm bill. He’s spent hours reading trade magazines, looking for ways to balance rising prices with proper nutrition. And he’s working on ways to reduce the cost of meals through strategic purchasing.

He talks excitedly about the recent closure of a nearby Italian restaurant chain. It means he can make an aggressive buy on pasta sauce soon, saving the county a few dollars in the process.

He has eight-foot-tall stacks of saltine crackers stored near the kitchen. He proudly talks about how he got them at nearly half the cost. More savings on the year.

Each day, from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., a jail staff of 11 and a work crew of more than 40 inmates prepare between 2,300 and 2,600 meals to feed those housed at the main jail, the work center and a juvenile facility.

Most of the plates see food such as hot dogs, rice soup and salads prepared assembly-line style in the main kitchen. The efficiency of the operation has the cost to feed an inmate at an average of $4.98 per day for the jail’s standard fare. Breakfast, lunch and dinner each cost about $1.66 to make.

To prepare a kosher dish, however, requires special ordering and preparation of food. The orange in the breakfast must be kosher, perhaps a different protein needs to be presented at lunch, and at dinner the entree must be swapped with a shelf-stored heatable dish that comes prepackaged as kosher-approved.

When the jail calculated its costs for the 2013-14 budget, it found that on average, a kosher breakfast cost $2.08, lunch cost $2.49 and dinner cost $7.21.

It’s a rugged hit to what Loftgren calls “a penny business,” but the jail has already taken steps to mitigate the hit.

Loftgren said he can’t go into specifics about upcoming contract bids in March, but his current estimate has kosher diets dropping to a cost of $9.03 per day through 2013.

“It means I just saved $300,000 if the numbers stay steady,” Loftgren said. “I don’t think they will stay steady, but I’m still excited about that number.”

Loftgren is optimistic he can cut the cost even further on his kosher meals, and he’s looking at everything to find savings.

A cardboard box in Loftgren’s office is filled with dressing packets certified as kosher. He’ll introduce them to meals by the end of the month, replacing the current method of providing dressing, and hopefully saving five cents per plate. And that five cents has him pretty happy.

“I’m not joking when I say we are a penny business,” Loftgren said. “At over 1 million meals served each year, it adds up.”

The bottom line, Loftgren says, is that he believes special meals will make up 20 percent of the jail’s food offerings in 2013. And religious meals will likely rise along with that number, continuing to drive up the cost.

“There are cost savings we can look at,” Loftgren said. “But when 10.2 percent of my population is on a religious diet, it’s a hit.”

Erik Hidle: 360-735-4547; http://twitter.com/col_clarkgov ; erik.hidle@columbian.com.