DECATUR, Ala. — A federal judge ordered an Alabama sheriff locked up in his own jail Wednesday after holding him in contempt for failing to adequately feed inmates while profiting from the skimpy meals.
U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon had Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett arrested at the end of a hearing that produced dramatic testimony from skinny prisoners about paper-thin bologna and cold grits.
Bartlett’s attorney, Donald Rhea, said he believes the sheriff will be kept away from other inmates and hopes he will be quickly released.
The sheriff had testified that he legally pocketed about $212,000 over three years with surplus meal money but denied that inmates were improperly fed. Clemon, however, said the sheriff would be jailed until he comes up with a plan to provide the 300 jail inmates with nutritionally adequate meals, as required by a 2001 court order.
Clemon said the law allowing sheriffs to take home surplus meal money is “probably unconstitutional,” but his ruling was limited to the finding that the court order was violated.
“He makes money by failing to spend the allocated funds for food for inmates,” Clemon said.
An attorney representing the inmates, Melanie Velez, called Clemon’s order to take the sheriff into custody “extraordinary.” She said she was shocked to learn how much meal money Bartlett was taking home.
Sheriffs in 55 of Alabama’s 67 counties operate under the system allowing them to make money operating their kitchens. The law pays sheriffs $1.75 a day for each prisoner they house and lets the elected officers pocket any profit they can generate.
Sheriffs can keep the money as personal income. They historically have provided little information about profits, so the hearing offered a rare look into a practice that dates back to the Depression.
At the hearing, 10 prisoners told Clemon meals are so small that they’re forced to buy snacks from a for-profit store the jailers operate. Most of the inmates appeared thin, with baggy jail coveralls hanging off their frames.
Inmates told of getting half an egg, a spoonful of oatmeal and one piece of toast most days at their 3 a.m. daily breakfast. Lunch is usually a handful of chips and two sandwiches with barely enough peanut butter to taste.
“It looks like it was sprayed on with an aerosol can,” testified Demetrius Hines, adding he’s lost at least 35 pounds in five months since his arrest on drug charges.
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