New America Media Blogs
Posted on Dec 16, 2009

Michael A. Kroll

The latest issue of San Quentin News (AUG/SEPT/OCT 2009), a prisoner-run newspaper (that has the Administration’s blessing) is filled with the kind of stories you expect to find in prison publications. The front page features stories that explain the latest federal court ruling regarding overcrowding in California’s prisons (“Taking a Thorough Look at the Federal Court Ruling”), inmates donating money to the fight against breast cancer (“S.Q. Closing on $9,000 Goal For Its Breast Cancer Walk”), the possibility that Willie Nelson might do a concert there next spring (“Willie To Play At S.Q.?”), and a profile of a Bay Area human rights advocate recently fired by the White House (“Van Jones: A Life With Ups and Downs”).

But the two-sentence front-page story that caught my eye — and still has me shaking my head in disbelief — is titled, “SALT & PEPPER.” It’s a simple story: “Salt and Pepper will no longer be provided to inmates in their lunches. Food service officials say that health concerns led to the decision.”

Health concerns? At San Quentin? Virtually no prisoner in that ancient fortress can escape the assaults to their health on a daily basis. It is filthy! Toilets routinely are backed up and flood individual cells and entire tiers. There is years of grime and mold on the walls. Prisoners are sometimes forced to take showers while standing ankle-deep in foul-smelling standing water. And no one I have ever visited there over the past 30 years has avoided the coughs, colds, fevers and general degradation to their health that such living conditions generate.

Health concerns? For the more than 600 prisoners condemned to die there, and awaiting the final solution? Oh yes, the Department of Corrections (and Rehabilitation) — those we pay to do our bidding (our killing) — definitely have those prisoners’ “health concerns” as their top priority!

And so they — we — have taken their salt and pepper! It may seem a petty thing to focus on, to complain about, when so many other deprivations define what life in state prison in general is like, and how disgusting the lack of cleanliness and hygiene make life at San Quentin, in particular. But think about it… no more salt and pepper.

In the name of “health concerns,” smoking has already been banned at California prisons, turning tobacco into one of the most sought after forms of contraband now being traded (for big bucks) by guards who smuggle it in (and smoke it, themselves, though it’s forbidden to them, too). And now we can add salt and pepper to that list of highly valued commodities that can be traded for money, for favors, for protection…

Health concerns? Is there a fool alive who really believes that we care about inmate health in this state, especially after the federal courts have now stripped California of its responsibility for providing health care in our prisons because of its gross negligence in that regard? Is there anyone who doesn’t see through the “health concerns” rationale, who doesn’t recognize this as an out-and-out lie?

No, it is not concern for the health of our prison slaves that motivates this latest affront to individual humanity, but concern for money. It’s money, pure and simple, that drives this “penny wise, pound foolish” policy decision. While the Schwarzenegger Administration continues to insist on building a new death row complex (to the tune of half a billion dollars), even as the state reels from near economic collapse, the state cannot afford to provide salt and pepper to its slaves! Salt and pepper!

Thank you so much for thinking about our health, a grateful prison population must be saying. I imagine that as the next untrained prison guard inserts that lethal needle into the veins of the next Californian we put to death, he or she will lean close and whisper a comforting reminder, “We’re doing this for your own good.”