DannyBoyinExile

The biggest contest between TDCJ and its inmates is probably the determination of the inmates to try and eat twice, versus the administration’s determination to prevent it. Its arena is the chow hall.
Like any game of cat and mouse, this one is steadily evolving, as each side develops new tactics. In the old days, all an inmate had to do was catch a guard paying attention to something else (or not paying attention at all!) – and slip away from the table and back into line, for an encore. Some inmates would have made excellent snipers (or cat burglars!) because they were so stealthy as they’d literally crawl along the floor, whispering to each table they passed, “Is he looking at me?”
Granted, this happens far more often on chicken day than it does on, say, bologna sandwich day – but some guys try it EVERY day, just for the thrill of getting away with it. If he could beat the guard on the floor, all he had to worry about was whether or not the guard behind the line would recognize him when he came back through. Whether he did or didn’t, there was no way he could PROVE the guy had already eaten – and in any case, all the inmate had to worry about was being told no and sent back to his wing.
So TDCJ thought of a way to prevent these acts of culinary mischief: the meal ticket. This was a piece of thick paper with a space for each meal, each day, and was issued to each inmate once a month.
In theory, by marking the card as we went through the line, we wouldn’t be able to eat twice. In reality, inmates didn’t accept defeat so easily. For one thing, there was always a thriving black market, where inmates would steal or sell their meal tickets – then simply report them as stolen. The administration couldn’t exactly refuse to feed them for the rest of the month, so they had no choice but to issue them a replacement. This may still require a commando crawl to get back into line, but once you did, you’d have no problem getting another tray.
Then an inmate thought of an even more effective way to eat twice. All you had to do was smear a thin layer of glue across your meal ticket, and let it dry. Then they could mark it all they wanted – and you could just lick your finger and rub the ink right off of it. Then that extra pork chop was as good as yours!
TDCJ didn’t accept defeat so easily, either. Once they realized what the inmates were doing, they changed their policy and began using a hole puncher to punch a hole in the spot for that day’s meal – and glue couldn’t help with that. So it was back to buying extra meal tickets, with huge numbers of inmates reporting them lost or stolen.
Finally, they REALLY went high-tech on us. Now each serving line of each chow hall in TDCJ is equipped with a computer and a scanner. So they scan each inmate’s ID card, and can tell not only if he’s already eaten, but whether or not he’s on any special diet as well.
Inmates still haven’t given up on trying to eat twice. But the only way it’s practical now is if you can borrow someone else’s ID card who wasn’t planning to eat. This still happens on occasion, and I’ve even had people ask to use MY ID card, when I didn’t feel going to chow. But it won’t work, in my case. I’ve worked in the kitchen here for years, so practically any guard there will tell the idiot, “You are NOT Danny Matthews.” Besides – why would I risk getting in trouble myself, just because some guy (who probably needs to lose weight anyway!) wants two extra corn dogs?
The double-dipping has pretty much been eliminated in today’s TDCJ, unless they get extra food the old-fashioned way, and just buy it from a kitchen worker! That’s illegal too, but it has been going on for as long as there have been prisons, so it’s unlikely to stop now.
I don’t blame a guy for wanting more of something, when they finally feed us something that’s worth eating twice. But I can honestly say that nobody is starving in TDCJ. When I find myself hungry, I just drink a few cups of water and tough it out until the next meal – which is never more than a few hours away. There are many people in the world who would be grateful to be able to have the meals that we take for granted, so I might as well be grateful, too… So says DannyBoy.