International Law

Prisoner food costs

By John Hirst

I noticed the following item in a national newspaper: ?£12 a day spent on prison cell food: prisoners held in police cells have up to four times as much spent on their food as hospital patients, it has been revealed. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, disclosed that police forces were given as much as £12 a day to feed detainees - compared with about £3 per head in hospitals and £2 a day for those in prison?.
From my time working in the kitchen office in HMP Winchester back in 2002, I recall that the daily food allowance then was £1.44 per prisoner, although the allowance for prison dogs was over £3! Does Inside Time happen to know what the current figures are?

Response from: Derek Allen Policy & Planning Unit

The Prison Service writes: The Service provides approximately 75 million meals each year at an average food cost of about £2 per prisoner per day. This cost includes the provision of all food and beverage requirements, i.e. breakfast, midday and evening meal and a supper snack, together with all condiments and beverages. Comparisons drawn using food costs from other parts of the public sector should be treated with caution. Consumers are not the same. The food requirements of adult prisoners or even young offenders are not the same as schoolchildren, hospital patients or military personnel. The National Audit Office study: ?Serving Time: Prisoner Diet and Exercise? (March 2006) reported that on the whole the Prison Service provides a well managed and professional catering service.

Mr Allen referred to an item which stated that the cost of providing food for prisoners held in police cells under Operation Safeguard was up to £12 per day. The use of police cells is a contingency and it is the nature of contingencies that costs may have to be higher to guarantee availability at short notice. Provision of food in prisons can be planned with much greater certainty and can be purchased in bulk, resulting in lower costs than in Safeguard. We are currently considering, with the police, how we might improve upon current Safeguard arrangements

Full post as published by prisonlawinsideout on June 07, 2008 (boomark / email).