New York City Provides Healthier Diet For Inmates

New York City, NY (AHN) - New York City's penal system is leading the way toward better health for New Yorkers. It has stopped serving butter, sweets and whole milk to inmates and no longer uses trans fat for cooking.

Aside from providing better health to prisoners, the change in ingredients and cooking methods aim to cut medical costs caused by an inmate having a stroke, diabetic attack or other medical emergency, city commissioner Martin Horn said, according to reports.

Other changes include serving inmates cereals rich in fiber, more fresh fruits, whole wheat bread, less red meat and more chicken, fish and tofu. Some inmates have complained of the blander meals they now have.

Horn told the New York Daily News, "These people are in our custody, and they don't get to make their own choices. We have a moral obligation to make sound choices for them."

While the new prison menu seeks to cut costs and provide healthier food choices for inmates, there are proposals to reduce instead the number of inmates by repealing the 1973 Rockefeller drug law that provides the same penalty or prison term for offenders caught even with small amounts of drugs, according to reports by Newsday.

In the state, there are over 13,400 drug offenders, the majority of whom had no records of past drug offense. If they are all kept in jail, it would cost the state $1.5 billion to build more prisons, while operating costs would soar to $500 million a year.

New York is faced with being forced to trim its prison budget because the state has a $4.4 billion budget deficit.