On Christmas Day, the inmates at Santa Cruz County Jail will get a welcome respite from their regularly scheduled, nutritious but mostly unexciting high school cafeteria-style meals — glazed ham with sweet potatoes and ice cream for dessert.

If an inmate has been behaving poorly, however, while all his incarcerated compatriots dine on one of the few special meals of the year, he will instead be forced to feast on “the loaf.”

Otherwise known as the disciplinary diet loaf, prison loaf and management loaf, when all else fails in disciplining an inmate — be it loss of visits, free time or other privileges — the deputies turn to this bland log of meat and vegetables to get the disruptive inmate to follow the rules.

It only happens once or twice a year, according to officials, but where other corrective measures fail, the loaf is typically successful.

“Usually, they only last a couple days on the loaf before they agree to comply with directions and are given normal meals again,” said Tim Sanford, the jail’s food service manager for 15 years.

The loaf — by most accounts, a highly effective measure in getting inmates to follow rules — is the only example of food being used as discipline in the correctional system, and has been challenged under the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment in several U.S. states.

Cooking up controversy

The exact origin of the idea to serve meatloaf as a punishment is unknown; however, the practice goes back to at least the early ’80s, when the state of Arizona was sued for a bland meatloaf served to misbehaving inmates for five days at a time. Arizona eventually lost that case because it was applied too indiscriminately, but a version of the loaf is still served there for disciplinary purposes.

Court challenges to the use of the loaf as punishment have come up in Vermont, Illinois, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia, among other states. Typically, its use has been upheld, although some states have placed narrow stipulations on its implementation, such as using it only in cases where the prisoner acts out with food or utensils.

“With the Eighth Amendment, the law on prison conditions is looking at a baseline, not the ideal,” said Mona Lynch, professor of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine and the director of the school’s Center in Law, Society and Culture. “It’s a fairly tough hurdle to claim something is unconstitutional…. Courts don’t necessarily look at psychological effects, they look at if it will make you physically ill. Courts traditionally look at things like: Is it too hot or too cold? Is there rampant pestilence, rampant infestation of rodents? Is nutrition below what is needed to survive and maintain adequate body weight? Is water drinkable and potable? It’s very, very basic stuff. As long as its not killing them, it should be OK.”

One case brought in Oregon made it to the United States Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit, where the judges argued in their 1993 decision that “[t]he Eighth Amendment requires only that prisoners receive food that is adequate to maintain health; it need not be tasty or aesthetically appealing.”

Some states, such as New York, Massachusetts and Minnesota, have banned the loaf, and using food for punishment in general, from their prisons. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does not use it in the prisons it runs, but locally managed facilities are free to serve it, as both the Santa Cruz and Los Angeles county jails do.

“In every prison, the warden is basically king, 90 percent of the time they basically can do anything they want,” said Cyrus Naim, a Los Angeles-based lawyer who studied prison food law while at Harvard University. “The Eighth Amendment is the only real line that decides what can and cannot happen. Judges don’t really want to step in and tell a warden how to do their job. When things get egregious, they will step in.”

Each state has its own recipe, typically codified in state rules for corrections facilities. Some are vegetarian, some are made more palatable with generous portions of ground turkey, but they are designed to provide all the nutrition an inmate needs and none of the savory satisfaction.

A useful tool

At the Santa Cruz County Jail, Sanford uses ground beef in his recipe. A jail official who wants to administer the disciplinary diet to an inmate most first clear it with Chief Deputy Jeff Marsh, who is in charge of the jail, and then it can only be served three consecutive days before resubmitting for approval. An inmate on a special diet for medical reasons may not be placed on the loaf without a doctor’s approval.

The loaf looks like it is constructed from layers of particle board, and little kernels of corn and slivers of carrot jut out from the insides when its is bisected. It does not taste bad, but rather is so dry and lacking in flavor as to be at best unappetizing and at worst better used mixed with milk to make a nice spackle. It is served with two slices of wheat bread and, instead of the typical serving of milk, a cup of water.

Inmates on the regular diet receive a rotating selection of dishes that are the epitome of a balanced meal: A chicken dish, vegetable mix, a piece of fruit and a glass of milk would be a typical dinner, according to Sanford.

“The use of a meatloaf is purely punitive, it has no deterrent value,” Lynch said. “Feeding something unpalatable as punishment doesn’t necessarily do the trick. Punitive measures in prison have been used for hundreds of years and there is no research to show that it improves the behavior of that individual. … There are long-term messages to using that kind of treatment. It’s dehumanizing and certainly emasculating. It says ‘We will basically treat you like a dog, we will give you nutrition but you can’t enjoy it.’ ”

For the officers in charge of supervising inmates, however, it is a valuable regulatory tool.

“It’s got everything you need for a growing boy, but not a lot of taste to it,” said Lt. Greg Lansdowne, the main jail’s commander. “It’s so bland they hopefully fall in line quickly. It’s the monotony of it, and they know it’s coming.”

‘Little things matter’

Inmate Michael S. has never heard of the loaf.

That is because he is one of the better behaved inmates at the Santa Cruz County Jail, so he not only is rarely if ever disciplined but also is assigned work duty, which comes with the perk of better meals.

“Better food is not one of the reasons I want to be on work duty, it’s the only reason,” said Michael, who works in the laundry room.

For his good behavior and labor, Michael gets a better lunch than the other inmates, and two desserts per week instead of one.

“The little things really matter for people who don’t have basic freedoms, mail is very important and food is exceptionally important,” Lynch said.

Michael, who misses chocolate and fast food more than anything, rarely has money for the commissary but sometimes he fills out an order form anyway, just so he can daydream about the sweet and salty flavors that could be exciting his taste buds.

“A lot of the food they serve has no taste, a little bit of salt and pepper would be great,” Michael said.

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