It’s no secret our food sucks. Terrible meals behind bars are as predictable as California sunshine. Most people know this, even if they haven’t set foot inside a prison.
Still, a motherf—–’s gotta eat. That often leads us to the prison’s company store or, as the administrators call it, the canteen. But every six weeks or so, another option pops up: the vaunted food sale. Depending on your perspective, food sales are either a modern miracle or the “Hunger Games.”
Food sales are fundraisers when real food from outside is trucked in and sold to prisoners at a vicious markup. The sales support local organizations, usually the Special Olympics, veterans’ organizations, schools or sports teams. I’ve seen food sales offering pizza, rotisserie chicken, burgers, sandwiches, pastries, cheesecakes, candy, cookies and canned energy drinks.
On top of the regular markup, our prison adds a charge per order for the “inmate welfare fund.” The IWF used to pay for things like indigent supplies and licensing to show movies, but these days it is absorbed into the prison’s general fund.
During a food sale last year, a large one-topping pizza from Little Caesars totaled about $15, versus the $8 it would usually cost (before sales tax) on the outside. A Jack in the Box Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger combo meal totaled around $19.50, versus the $13.59 it would usually cost.
It’s a testament to how degraded our already-meager food fare is that several hundred guys will stand outside all day in the rain to buy pricey, cold, day-old Little Caesars pizza — or hope one of their friends kicks them a slice.
I hate food sale days because everyone you talk to thinks you’re only being nice so they’ll give you something. That’s why I tend to avoid them. But one day in February 2025, I got caught in one.
I had gone out to visit the stray cats who live in our yard. But the rain had driven them into hiding. So instead, I went over to talk with a friend who was near the food sale.
While chatting, I observed the scene.
Picture an asphalt track that runs in front of a chain-link fence with a gate in it. All of the food sale buyers and hangers-on were mobbing this closed gate from inside. It was like an old-timey auction: people surrounding the auctioneer and shouting while he called out lucky names, beckoning them to pass through the golden gate, pick up their food, then push back through the mob with their treasures.
One buyer parted the food sale crowd with his prize piled high in his arms, his hungry homies in tow. He was carrying a stack of pizza boxes and, perched on top, a bunch of plastic trays of chicken wings. I think the food was from Costco.
He’d bought so much that he couldn’t quite manage it all. As if in slow motion, we watched a plastic tray of yesterday’s chicken wings fall like a dying star and break apart on the asphalt.
A collective groan rose from the crowd — don’t let anyone tell you folks inside don’t understand sympathetic pain — but the shopper just shook his head. He and his entourage walked on, abandoning the half dozen wings that lay scattered across the track. In the dirt. Where everybody walks. Where everybody spits.
As the owner relinquished his fallen food, others nearby exchanged looks. You could see the wheels turning in people’s heads.
Then, despite laughs and half-hearted cries of “Don’t do it, brother!” one guy darted in to grab a piece of road chicken. Then another guy grabbed one, and another, until only the most forlorn wing, the one even the scavengers neglected, lay by its lonesome.
Then someone nabbed that one, too.
Instead of joining the lukewarm public outcry, all I could think at the moment was, “Damn, I should’ve been quicker.”