Stop Deplorable Conditions at Ohio and Michigan Prisons

Action Alert!

Inmates don’t need luxury in prisons, but they need to be treated like people. Serving them maggot-infested food is no way to do that.

Ideally, prisons would serve to teach inmates a lesson about the consequences of their actions. In practice, they often disproportionately punish poor people and people of color. And though they certainly don’t need to be luxurious, they absolutely must be humane. But in Ohio and Michigan, inmates have reported food and serving equipment covered in live maggots — which is not humane in the slightest.

In Ohio’s Trumbull Correctional, live maggots were “falling out of a warming tray”; at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, they’d infested a turkey roll that was being sliced for an evening meal. Meanwhile, maggots squirmed out of the cracks in the serving line at a prison in Michigan earlier this year — and later, at least 30 inmates vomited and complained of severe dia rrhea.

The maggots are a symptom of a larger problem of systematic neglect. Employees at Aramark, the private food contractor at both prisons, were also found smuggling in contraband and having sexual relations with inmates. This is all absolutely unacceptable.

Ohio and Michigan must take every step to ensure that their inmates are being treated with dignity and respect. Urge their state governors to crack down on the deplorable conditions in these prisons!