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| Program reduces inmate food costs |
| By The Register-Guard |
| Published: 09/15/2006 |
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SALEM, OR - If a food manufacturer is looking to dump five truckloads of kiddie cereal because S-E-X appears in a word-search game on the back of the boxes, Fred Monem will find out. Monem is the Oregon Department of Corrections' secret weapon in the fight to cut down the cost of feeding its 13,000 prisoners. Like a frenetic Chicago commodities trader, the department's food service administrator is up by 4 a.m., working the phones and shaking down his sources to find the biggest bargains on the wholesale food market. And every time he scores name-brand cereal for 62 cents a box instead of the $3.25 standard wholesale rate, the food winds up on inmates' tables and the the savings ends up helping state government's bottom line. Prison officials consider the program a real success story. Since Monem traded his gig with a major commercial food vendor for one with the Oregon Department of Corrections, the state has seen its costs drop from $3.95 per inmate a day in 1997 to $2.38. Only 11 states feed their prisoners more cheaply than Oregon does, according to a U.S. Department of Justice study. Read more. If link has expired, check the website of the article's original news source. |
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