Sheriff Took $110,000 From Prison Food Fund - 49 Other Sheriffs Doing The Same
An Alabama Sheriff was recently caught pocketing over $110,000 in taxpayer money that was allocated for feeding inmates in the county jail that he runs.
According to prosecutors, between the years of 2014 and 2016, Monroe County Sheriff Thomas Tate pocketed large sums of money that was supposed to buy food for inmates at the jail. Unfortunately, this is a common practice across the state, with many Sheriffs doing this out in the open, claiming that they aren’t doing anything wrong.
Sheriff Tate claims that a state law allows local police to keep any leftover tax money that was intended to feed county jail inmates. However, this leaves an obvious incentive for Sheriffs to cut corners or neglect their responsibilities in feeding inmates.
The Southern Center for Human Rights and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice have been investigating this issue and were forced to file a lawsuit to gain access to the financial records of prisons and police departments throughout the state.
The organizations sued 49 Alabama county sheriffs over their “refusal to produce public records showing whether, and if so by how much, they have personally profited from funds allocated for feeding people in their jails,” according to a statement they released last month.
Aaron Littman, a staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights says that the Sheriffs are intentionally misinterpreting the law.
“Our position is that this practice is illegal now, but it’s clear that many sheriffs believe its legal for them to do this. Clearly this is a practice which is problematic because it creates an incentive for sheriffs to spend as little as possible on feeding folks … and obviously when a minimal amount of money is approved for something and less than that is spent, the quality suffers,” Littman told AL.com Thursday.
In the records that were forced out in court, it was revealed that Sheriff Tate’s office received a total of $110,459.77 from funds for inmate food was “declared excess and paid to Sheriff Thomas Tate.”
“I do it just like the law tells us to. That’s about all I have to say about that. We feed all our inmates good and the excess goes to the sheriff. If you declare it excess, you take it and you pay taxes on it,” Tate said during a brief phone interview with AL.com Friday.
Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin also openly admitted to personally taking funds from these accounts. “The law says it’s a personal account and that’s the way I’ve always done it and that’s the way the law reads and that’s the way I do business. That’s the way the law’s written,” Entrekin said.
Entrekin reportedly paid for landscaping services at his home with checks that were taken from the inmate food fund. According to landscaper Matt Qualls, Entrekin paid him $10 an hour to mow his lawn using checks that were labeled “Sheriff Todd Entrekin Food Provision Account.”
“I mowed his yard and his parents’ yard. I was out there pretty much every day, Monday through Friday, from the end of the school year into the summer of 2015. I saw that in the corner of the checks it said Food Provision, and a couple people I knew came through the jail, and they say they got meat maybe once a month and every other day it was just beans and vegetables. I put two and two together and realized that that money could have gone toward some meat or something,” Qualls said.
Entrekin responded to the accusations saying that, “I do have an account that says Food Provision on it. The sheriffs are being sued statewide about how this money is being used … I’m not commenting on that because there’s a lawsuit pending.”
Morgan County Sheriff Ana Franklin reportedly lost $150,000 of taxpayer money from the county’s inmate food fund in a bad investment. A study last year found that incarcerated people are six times more likely to contract food-borne illnesses than the rest of the population.
I wrote this story @ http://themindunleashed.com/2018/02/sheriff-took-110000-from-prison-food-fund-49-other-sheriffs-doing-the-same.html
(sources for article are hyperlinked at the site above)
THIS WAS A STEEMIT EXCLUSIVE!!
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The government should do something about it to prevent starving of the prisoners
This this happening in all part of the world. And these kind of malpractices can only be unclock by accoumtable and transparent system
A friend of mine is 5 feet tall and very thin. He was taken to jail but he had done nothing wrong. In the 3 months in jail he lost so much weight. He said they rationed food to the point of starvation.... He usually eats very tiny portions so him saying that means it is really bad. Now I understand why. Thanks for sharing
Quality post. Glad I found this. Upvoted and followed.
One of my diabetic neighbors was arrested after a dispute with another neighbor. While in jail they did not make any necessary dietary changes and soon after he got out he had a heart attack and died. The family blames his death on the treatment he received from the jail. He was in real rough shape and none of the staff at the jail seemed to care one bit.
nice post brother @johnvibes 😎
thanks for sharing this information, otherwise who knows if or when I might have come across it 👍
Anyone that thinks Sheriffs are very considerate of prisoners hasn't been a prisoner of a Sheriff. While changing this law might be supposed to end theft from the hapless slaves caged in jails, that's completely false.
Research I have done has revealed numerous ways in which prison administrators steal from slaves.
Many institutions use proprietary scrip, rather than actual money, that the slaves use as money. This keeps real money from being smuggled into prisons, and controls the funds slaves are able to spend inside the institution. The prisons are banks, and their only customers are their slaves - just like real life!
These coupons are a form of cash, and are used for bribes, as guards can exchange them for actual money, or services from inmates. You can go ahead and speculate as to the kinds of services guards can purchase from slaves. You probably won't go far enough.
Some institutions have very low security clearance. Some don't even have fences.
Slaves in these institutions can participate in events, like Native American Sweats, Job Fairs, Movie Nights, and various kinds of festivals, religious and otherwise. Generally, as part of these events, festival foods are featured, and slaves can purchase such foods in advance.
I have personally observed prison administration staff stealing meat purchased for such events by the pickup truck load, presumably for resale. I have seen boxes of meats marked 'not for human consumption' served to imprisoned slaves. I have also had my life threatened, and my children, should I reveal these thieves.
Some prisons don't have their own kitchens, either security levels are too high to permit slaves to use the necessary tools, or rampant corruption has caused government to close them to prevent fraud and theft.
Kickbacks from food contractors are as easy to get as beer at a kegger.
The entire prison industrial complex is a perverse den of theives - and I'm not talking about the slaves kept in cages, but their keepers.
W.C. Fields once said something like 'If you want to see the dregs of humanity, the lowest scum of the Earth, go to the nearest jail parking lot - at shift change.'
He'd be just as right today.
Thanks!