Herald Sun reveals prisoners fed a “smorgasbord of delicacies” – $2.42 meals
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An outrageously misleading piece of garbage “reporting” from the hacks at the Herald Sun this morning:
A VICTIMS support group says it’s disgusting that Victoria’s worst criminals are feasting on gourmet delights including duck, prawns, rib-eye steaks and sushi.
The Herald Sun has learned murderous fiends including Peter Dupas, cop killer Bandali Debs, CBD killer Christopher Wayne Hudson and rapist John Xydias are chowing down on a smorgasbord of delicacies.
Roast turkey, porterhouse steak, prawn cutlets and smoked salmon also feature on a delectable list of items served up to inmates at Barwon Prison.
In documents obtained by the Herald Sun under Freedom of Information laws, the State Government revealed inmates gorge on mountains of cheese, delicious pastries and fresh fruit.
Sounds delicious. No wonder the families of the victims, who the Herald Sun chose to provoke with the above absurd rubbish, were outraged. One murder victim’s father the journalists cruelly taunted with this unbelievable tale was quoted advocating capital punishment by starvation:
“Some of them shouldn’t be given anything. They shouldn’t be alive,” he said.
But here’s the kicker:
Over nine months between October 2009 and July last year, the prison, which held on average 317 inmates a day, spent more than $623,000 on food – about $218 a month an inmate.
Or $7 a day. Or $2.42 a meal.
Yeah, “gourmet” meals.
Whiskas cat food sometimes claims to have “duck” or “fish” in it (often it even pretends to contain “meat”), but I’ve never seen it look anything like the picture the Herald Sun concluded the prisoners’ meals must resemble:
$2.42 worth, if you believe the Herald Sun. Those prison contractors must be MIRACLE workers.
Seriously, who believes this guff? Prisoners are fed slop. Of course they’re fed slop. The prisons are increasingly managed by private companies whose motive is profit, not prisoner comfort. Of course they cut corners. Of course they do the bare minimum they can get away with without losing the contract. And our governments – prompted by the culture of hate and fear promoted by tabloid charlatans at the Herald Sun and on talkback radio – are happy to turn a blind eye to it. Prisoners “have it too easy”? Have any of the following commenters ever visited a prison?
Jack of Gippsland Posted at 11:41 AM Today
It’s time the people of this state/country actually stood up to the government. This is bloody disgusting when we have hardworking decent people living on the poverty line or below and they cannot afford a decent meal. STAND UP PEOPLE, GET ORGANISED, STOP YOUR TAXES KEEPING THESE PIGS SO WELL FED!
And
jorge rodriguez of brisbane Posted at 11:42 AM Today
obviously crime does pay, where do we sign up ?
Seriously, if any Herald Sun commenters think it’s so great inside I, for one, am more than happy for my tax dollars to give them the opportunity to find out. I’m sure pretty much every prisoner in there would be willing to share the “high life” with them. It’s okay – we’ll let you out again when you’ve had enough “Club Med”.
Look, I know there’s some satisfaction for people who are doing it tough to feel righteous anger that others have it better than you, but – people in jail? Really? How gullible can you be?
UPDATE: Another commenter reveals how misleading stories like this again make victims of victims of crime:
Chris of Northern Suburbs Posted at 8:08 AM Today
After the article in the Herald Sun back in August was written, I was infuriated with the “easy life” behind bars, as I am a victim of rape and to know the perp was enjoying life like this, makes a mockery of the judiciary system telling me….”we’re getting tough with these criminals”!!! Hmmmmmm I think it’s tough on us victims to read this. I wrote to the department of justice and Premier Brumby at the time and was given lip service response – basically…prisoners have to be rehabiliated for when they are released, they do have to do it tough….. basically, I was “fobbed off” and told the Herald Sun article was a true representation! So who knows what the truth is?
Use your common sense, Chris. The sensationalist hacks are playing you. It’s a nasty game and you have every right to be angry – but try to direct it at the people profiting from your misery, cynically and disingenuously manipulating your pain, rather than their targets.
UPDATE #2: This appears to be their source (hat tip Matthew).
ELSEWHERE: And the NSW Liberals promise to increase the cost of prisons in the budget by unnecessarily and expensively filling them with drunks.
They’re all skeptics, too.
I wonder if the tabloids have competitions – “oh yeah, you reckon YOUR readers are stupid? That’s nothing! Try some of THIS ….”
CAN’T EVEN STARVE PRISONERS TO DEATH MISTER SPEAKER
Again – Page 29 of today’s Herald-Sun and the new website banner says it all:
Stories Start Here
The Hun is offically no longer a “Newspaper”. Fact is not required or requested as long as the “Story” is good. As the ad says in part:
But how can the HUN expect people to “think” unless they give the full story unless of course the HUN is telling people what to “think”.
Clearly this story is crap, but does anyone have access to the FOI documents they’re going on about? I’d love to see this comprehensively mythbusted but that’s difficult without seeing those documents.
It’s debunked from the content of the story itself, unless you genuinely believe that $2.42 buys someone a “gourmet” meal.
If this is their source:
http://resources.news.com.au/files/2011/02/28/1226013/546475-hs-news-file-dept-of-justice-foi-documents.pdf
I’m even more underwhelmed. It looks to me like they go through a lot of ham, silverside, pork chops and thin sausages. It appears to be the weekly kitchen orders for a month. Smoked salmon gets a mention … once. “2 units”, whatever that is. There’s a couple of kilos (I’m assuming) of brie in one entry – but I don’t see a “mountain” of anything in particular. Other than that it really is a lot of fairly straighforward aussie meat fare … and I’m seeing a disturbing shortage of fresh fruit and veg!
What an absolute crock.
It’s not a crock.
Prisoner scum are are eating smoked salmon and brie.
I can assure you that catering in the ADF when I was controlling that budget at a base only a few years ago came to less than $7 per person per day for the food only component. And we ate well. And we paid for it too plus costs for service.
And prisoners are sent to prison AS punishment, not FOR punishment.
There is a terrible streak of inbred meanness in Australia – it’s the same as the claims that refugees in maximum security prison for no reason live a life of luxury and if they don’t like it they can just go home to be slaughtered.
And here the meanies, led by the media, are whining about petrol prices while people are being slaughtered.
I have had a gutful of it – we are as mean as can be and then gloat about our frigging goodness.
I’m actually a lesbian transsexual Marxist prisoner and I’m using YOUR TAX DOLLARS to send drugs and pornography to innocent Aussie kids.
Howard made an art of making people feel relaxed and comfortable about being selfish and ignorant…I’ve always believed that the day he was elected was the end of the old genuine definition of mateship..not this populist idiot bullshit flagwaving racist morons believe in.
I also love how conservatives and their media shills will whine about the legal system being ‘broken’ (which is as much an admission of the guilty walking free as it is the innocent being jailed) but then come out with drivel like this story.
Even Col sees the practical side of this idiotic beat up.
Captain Col the Crook Cook…has a certain ring to it. Hmm, C4, now where have I heard that term before?
“that budget at a base only a few years ago came to less than $7 per person per day for the food only component. And we ate well.”
Really? Did you eat a “smorgasbord of delicacies”?
Yup.
“Yup.”
You should’ve been at the Sermon on the Mount.
I don’t know how to react to this story, as I have personally worked as a contractor on a few occasions at Brisbane’s Wacol maximum security prison, which was a real eye opener.
One one hand, the story in the herald sun is highly exagerated, but on the other hand, they certainly don’t get slop. In fact, most of the time, the staff canteen was served the same menu, of which I ate daily as well.
Smorgasboard they do get, delicacies they don’t. Each cell block takes turn in sending a prisoner to the kitchens at meal time to bring back a luke warm bain marie, with an assortment of about 4-5 foods. Usually a combination depending on the day of steamed vegies, stew, sausages, mashed potato, chicken schnitzel, cheap fish, bread, rice, and occasionally ham or anything that’s cheap. They eat on plastic plates using plastic forks and knives for obvious reasons. Although they fuse shaving blades into the plastic knives as weapons. Certainly no roast turkey, any cut above blade or chuck steak for stews and smoked salmon is just laughable. I never saw one obese prisoner that’s for sure.
I worked there for 4 months and never saw such things. Obviously since we do not have the death penalty, we have to keep these guys alive and to the minimum cost to the tax payer. If they starve or become seriously ill, it is the taxpayers who has to pay for what would probably be much more expensive treatment and medication than feeding them healthy food.
Maybe at the prison shop for prisoners who can afford it. But from what I heard, the chances of you getting to keep such things depended on what cell block you were in, if you were not bashed or raped for them, or willing to show other prisoners that you had cash to splash. I would say 95% of prisoners I saw never came back from the canteen with munchies. It was usually personal soap, shavers, shampoo etc.
While I never saw it, I find it highly doubtful.
It’s definately no club med. The place is highly depressive, full of anxiety and tension, especially on the remand side. After all, many prisoners in remand go on to be found innocent, yet have to wait it out in prison until their trial. Which is sometimes years away. How do you know which one of them to feed? They are mixed with those who are yet to be found guilty and of course “everyone” is innocent.
I still shudder everytime I drive past there and could not imagine being put in there. It’s not the convict gaols of the 1800′s with the shackles on the wall and bread and water, but it’s not somewhere you would spend even one night unless you were forced to.
Oops, I misread “rice cookers” to be “rice crackers”…..errr no, just no. That’s some real sensationalism at work there.
Thanks Phil M for the first hand report, and thanks Matthew of Canberra for the link to the FOI documents. I think the blog post should be amended to refer to the FOI documents.
Done.
“thanks Matthew of Canberra for the link to the FOI documents”
No idea if that’s all – it was just what they were linking. Meanwhile ….
zOMG! Our armed forces are pigging out on mountains of designer cheese! And smoked salmon! And foreign tortillas!
Just WHAT the %#!@ are you people up to? You’re not on some sort of gourmet tour … you’re supposed to be defending our COUNTRY!
Must keep our energy levels up for looming battle, Matthew.
And it might be bangers and mash (still popular – once known as zeppelins in the clouds) more often than smoked salmon and trendy cheese (actually not a popular meal with the troops).
Prisoners are eating like kings. Asylum seekers get to stay in 4 star hotels.
Why bother been a law abiding australian citizen?
Bangers and mash sounds alright though. Its probably those non-aussie criminals eating salmon and cheese with french names. And i saw muslim sausages in that FOI document. Cant even eat our sausages huh!
Some observations:
1. Cap Col: the Army hadn’t been privatised last I heard (ie: hunormous buying power and upper hand in sourcing quality food as opposed to buy low/invoice high privatised prisons)
2. “2 units” of smoked salmon is 2 kilos. Well looky here, that works out to 6.3 grams per villain, or, and I’m not in any position to suggest wrongdoing here – just doing some maths, 2 kilograms for a few people who might enjoy smoked salmon (assume same goes for brie?). Those small packs you see in the supermarket are 100g usually, so that means one of those packs would be shared amongst 15 baddies. No wonder criminals keep trying to get caught and always ask for custodial sentences!
3. Matthew Franklin, just saying.
4. Front page of the Fin today reported that Swanny had misled the G20 by saying Australia had no fossil fuel subsidies when in fact we taxpayers subsidise fossil fuels to the tune of about $8 billion every year (while we’re at it, that’s about $22,000,000 every day! “Great Big Old Subsidy”). So where is the opposition in question time? Where is the ABC 7pm news? Where is the 7:30 Report? Where IS everyone?
So when it’s a Greenpeace FOI it’s of no news value and when it’s Murdoch’s shameless etc, etc, etc..
‘Must keep our energy levels up for looming battle, Matthew. ‘
Like it takes any energy to be willfully ignorant and stupid.
Having looked through the commissary bill from the FOI request, it seems fairly apparent that they’re running three menus in that place.
One for the prisoners, another for the staff and a third for Management.
There’s heaps of rubbish being ordered, like porkbelly chops and mince,
a moderate amount of mediocre stuff like diced lamb and silverside and a small amount of things like Rib-eye steak, leg of lamb and smoked salmon.
You don’t need to have spent too much time inside a corporate/institutional kitchen to see what’s going on.
Does News Ltd. really think their readers are that stupid?
Cheers
But they are dying horrific deaths while being transported.
But they are being forcibly maimed unecessarily.
For as long as Australian prisoners are treated so inhumanely, I shall continue to take the News Ltd blather about “feasting on gourmet delights” with a very large, gourmet grain of Persian sea salt.
I have to keep up my strength for the blog wars.
Drop your linnen and start your grinnen’ Piers is on Q and A. Tweet deck locked and loaded SAH!
Quick some retard just posted Ju-LIAR, affix bayonets, dive on the grenade and defend the red queen.
Thanks for the post Phil.
This is interesting (for me):
‘Maybe at the prison shop for prisoners who can afford it’
A shop? In prison? I learn something every day. So it’s a bit like being on the Spirit Of Tassie? Food sounds quite similar, yet cheaper in prison.
“Having looked through the commissary bill from the FOI request, it seems fairly apparent that they’re running three menus in that place.
One for the prisoners, another for the staff and a third for Management.”
Yes, looks that way to me, too.
The brie, according to the story, was for a hospitality class. I suspect Herald Sun readers would rather we save the small amount of money spent on such rehab programs so we can spend more when prisoners are not rehabilitated and reoffend.
Funny how so many conservatives actually say this, along with things like “why bother working hard for a living if the gubberment’s just going to tax it all? Where’s the motivation?”
I’ve yet to see anybody give up their high-paying jobs because some of it is coming out as taxes, or start committing crimes so they can live it up in gaol. People whinge and bitch about how the crims and “illegal immigrants” have it so good, but they’ll do anything to avoid ending up in the same situation.
“I’ve yet to see anybody give up their high-paying jobs because some of it is coming out as taxes, or start committing crimes so they can live it up in gaol. People whinge and bitch about how the crims and “illegal immigrants” have it so good, but they’ll do anything to avoid ending up in the same situation.”
Exactly.
Oh, add “dole bludgers” in there after “illegal immigrants” for the trifecta.
These Murdoch bum wipers masquerading as newspapers and their TV bretheren Today Tonight and A Current Affair have data bases of outrage stories that they trot out whenever they think their gold fish readers and viewers have forgotten the last time they ran them.
Politicians similairly continue to use the same narrative they have been spinning us for years and yet no so called “journalist” ever takes them to task.
All it takes is memory to know that they do this and yet no one seems to cotton on. We as a population are damned and deserve to be so if we are witless enough to allow this influence us. We get the press and leaders we deserve.
“Does News Ltd. really think their readers are that stupid?”
It appears they do think that Marek, and sadly it also appears in many cases they are right.
I reckon you’ve hit the nail on the head regarding the menus.
Yes.
What’s worse, the evidence is that they’re largely right.
For SHV @24, who opines “Cap Col: the Army hadn’t been privatised last I heard” you should keep up with developments. I can correct you to say that for well over a decade now, large segments of the non-deployable “corporate services” in Defence have been contracted. (Yes, the ADF kept the guns ‘n stuff, but not the bases and support services).
Catering for Defence bases was certainly fully contracted to companies such as Spotless, Serco, Transfield etc when I was doing it. Each contract covered a region (in my case WA). This gave considerable buying power when also combined with the other contracts the company had which could include prisons and a myriad of other organisations needing catering. So they could do it cheap.
@Daniel #10. You forgot to add that you require halal meals for the final layer of outrage. Suprised that wasn’t mentioned in the HS.
these ‘news’ stories rile me more than any other. I have spent 13 years of my working life in the NSW system, including the last two and a half at Long Bay. I can assure you that gaol food is below the standard of both hospital and airline equivalents, both in a nutritional and culinary sense. Most are cooked centrally in one gaol which has a designated kitchen then pre-packed and shipped to other centres. Most inmates complain, and this correlates with my observations, that the food is designed to make them overweight and consequently lethargic as an inmate management tool.
@SHV : Barwon Prison is not privatised. Currently in Victoria only Port Phillip and Fulham Prisons are. Deer Park, now known as Dame Phyllis Frost was privatised under Kennett but returned to public adminstration due to woeful mismanagement by the private operators. I am sure your new Premier may be eyeing off other facilities to go though as we speak, which is probably the agenda of this article by the Hun.
@Eponymous : In NSW prisoners are entitled to weekly “buy-ups” which are things over and above the three meals a day. Prisoners have an account (not actually access to physical money though for obvious reasons), to which gaol wages are paid (if they are lucky enough to have a gaol job) or their family (if they are lucky enough to have people outrsuide that care about them) can deposit money. From this once a week they can order various luxury items that may make their life a little more pleasant, ranging from toiletries, tobacco, fresh and junk food, and even cooking utensils such as rice cookers, depending if their security classification permits the latter. Again this works as an incentive for good behaviour as it can be removed as a sanction.
To give a slightly different perspective, I have performed many examinations using ultrasound scanning on prisoners, both male and female, in Melbourne and also recently in NSW.
The vast majority of them suffer from constipation to some degree, the sure signature of a diet lacking in some of the necessary food groups. We are obviously still in the mentality that these people don’t deserve to be treated humanely.
@monkeywrench : May or not be the food monkey….there are things I knew were happening in Long Bay that caused my sphincter to involuntarily and subconsciously tighten…..
What?!?! Prisoners get to EAT?!?!111!!!
Next thing you’ll be telling us they get bedding to sleep on. No, seriously!
That would be a yes, but they get very touchy when it is pointed out, which is why they accuse their accusers of being elitists. They don’t want their readers to know what they really think of them, so they pretend it’s them educated toffs.
Ltd News readers must be dumb as dog poo ? and yes they keep coming back to lick the bowl of lies. Thats if they can read more than the headline.
Capt. Coal , the troll.
They eat better than I do. That’s it, I’m going to prison.
It appears that kids on Christmas Island are again being treated to capsicum, spray that is. Which can be deadly.
I remember a Wayne and Schuster sketch from the 1970s about a luxury prison where people were trying to break in. Wish I knew where to find it … *
(*translation: Couldn’t be f**ed looking for it)
Eponymous@29
Yeah, many of them don’t have family or friends that come and visit them and so don’t get access to say a new brush, shampoo, or soap. I was there for months and never saw anyone coming back with drumsticks or tim tams.
Learn something every day? Yes, so did I, like prostitutes (certain prisoners), remand, reception, protected unit, protected from protected unit, 18-25 year olds better believe sodomy exists, trophies and institutionalisation is real for some.
Well it certainly distracts from the Coal Mining Robber Barons turning whopper profits with our one-time-only resources..
The parallels with the U.S and Fox News are certainly disturbing…that people can be so patently thick and easily distracted as to spend their time kicking around the unemployed and incarcerated whilst giving tax breaks to the uber-wealthy is mind boggling.
Deziner @33:
Hang on … “dole bludgers” don’t belong on that list of maligned stereotypes. Mainly because there’s plenty of people who really *do* bludge off the dole. They’re in their few, but they do exist.
One example:
I was asked for money by someone once on a tram when I was living in Melbourne. Less than two weeks later I was on another tram where I was within earshot of the same guy telling another likeminded person how there was “no way” he was ever going to work for anyone; he just reserved his right as an individual to do as he pleased … and bum off the rest of society.
I shit you not, that’s what he said.
Shades of grey and all that.
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