# Sigue el Dinero: Comida en las Prisiones **Published**: 2026-07-20 **Source**: https://gps.press/es/follow-the-money-es/prison-food/ **Author**: Georgia Prisoners' Speak --- [Saltar al contenido](#content) The official number$0.54 …per meal. Georgia’s appropriated **“Food and Farm Operations”** line is about **$31 million a year** — roughly **$0.54 a meal**, about **15%** of the American Correctional Association’s ~$3.66 recommendation, and down ~60% in real terms since 2015. That’s the part the state shows you. Source: Georgia Governor’s Budget Reports / Open Georgia appropriations; ACA meal-cost benchmark. The real economy · four channels ## What that number hides Behind the $31M food line sit four much larger flows of money and labor. Three of the four run on incarcerated workers paid little or nothing — and the most profitable one is run by the state itself. Channel 1 ### The food the state grows — with unpaid labor $325.7Mto GCI from GDC, FY18–25 (Open Georgia) **Georgia Correctional Industries (GCI)** is a state-owned, self-funded corporation — total revenue about **$83M/year** (state ACFR) — that grows, cans, and processes much of the food served inside, across five food-processing units and six farms. Georgia pays its incarcerated industries workers $0 — unusual even among prison-labor states. Roughly **half** of GCI’s sales to GDC are food (an estimate — the state reports GCI as a single undifferentiated line and is exempt from breaking it out). And GCI is a **mandatory, no-bid “preferred source”**: state agencies are required by law to buy from it. [→ See what that food actually becomes on the tray — calories, nutrition, and the “2,900-calorie” claim](/food/) Sources: Open Georgia state payments; Georgia ACFR (GCI internal-service fund); GCI fact sheet; ACLU *Captive Labor* (2022); O.C.G.A. § 42-10 / DOAS Tier-Three mandatory sources. Channel 2 ### The family-package monopoly $14.5MGDC→Aramark, FY2025 — up ~5× since FY22 Georgia ended the practice of letting families mail food and clothing to their incarcerated loved ones and funneled them to a **single approved vendor** — Access Securepak, then **Union Supply** (a vendor Aramark bought in 2022). Families may now send one food package **per quarter** (capped at 15 lbs or $100) and one clothing/property package **per month** — at captive-market prices. The ~5× jump to $14.5M in GDC’s payments to Aramark since 2022 tracks this program — GDC buys the goods in bulk, and they’re packaged by incarcerated women at **Lee Arrendale State Prison**. The cost is in the structure: families are locked to a single vendor and buy basics **one unit at a time** at marked-up prices — a single T-shirt for **$4.55–$9.25**, socks **$1.35** a pair — plus shipping and sales tax, on goods they were once allowed to mail in for free. Sources: GDC vendor-transition notice (Union Supply replaced Access Securepak 1/1/2017); GDC SOP 206.01; GCI fact sheet (Lee Arrendale fulfillment); Open Georgia; archived Georgia Union Supply package catalog. *Note: pay status of the Arrendale packaging work is disputed (GCI cites a federal PIE “prevailing wage”; advocacy data shows $0) and the exact GDC commission is not public.* Channel 3 ### The commissary — where the state is the profiteer ~$47Mextracted from families, 2024 The in-prison store is **inmate-funded** — the state contract with the vendor (Georgia Commissary Suppliers / Stewart’s) has a face value of **$1.00**. The money is the markup: **GDC itself sets prices 54–323% over wholesale** — 132% on candy, up to 833% on a shower cap — generating about **$19.8M/year** in markup (a ~73% gross margin), and remits **30.5% of store sales** to its Central Office. **GDC is the one marking up basics** — for people it pays nothing — and keeping the difference. [Read our commissary investigation →](/georgias-prison-commissary-extortion/) Sources: GDC statewide commissary contract (eff. 11/01/25) — COMPENSATION terms; GDC SOP 407.02 (30.5% remittance); GPS analysis of the 519-item GDC commissary price file (FY2024). Channel 4 ### The kitchens — in-house, quietly privatizing 4 facilitiesflagged for food-service privatization, FY2025 Georgia’s prison kitchens are run in-house (by GCI), not by an outside food contractor — its annual reports say so. But amid a **staffing collapse** (correctional-officer vacancies of 47–55%), the FY2025 budget quietly lists “**privatizing food services at four facilities**.” Aramark has historically run only two prison kitchens (Hays and Smith). This is the leading edge of outsourcing kitchens the state can no longer staff — worth watching. Sources: GDC Annual Fiscal Reports (FY2018–2025, staffing + food-service); FY2025 Governor’s Budget Report (reductions). *The full list of facilities is not yet public — we name only the two that are confirmed.* Zoom out ## The same system, across our data Every number below comes from GPS’s own databases and evidence — click through to the underlying data. [≈250–300 calories on typical trays photographed inside GDC facilities and analyzed by GPS — against the ~2,900 a day the state claims to serve GPS tray-photo analysis · GCI product spec sheets See the trays →](/food/) [1.7% of Georgia’s $1.79 billion corrections budget is the food line ($31.3M) — feeding people is the smallest thing the system pays for FY 2027 Appropriations Act (HB 974) See the full budget →](/gdc-budget/) [≈$8,000 per person per year now goes to prison healthcare — the downstream bill for feeding people at 54 cents a meal FY 2027 Appropriations Act (HB 974) ÷ GDC population report Follow the healthcare money →](/follow-the-money/medical/) What the state won’t show ## The numbers we can’t see — and why Three of the most important figures here are **undisclosed by design**, and the Department fee-loads open-records requests that would pry them loose: - **GCI’s food share** — reported as one lump “Sales and Services” line; the state is formally exempt from breaking it out. Our ~half is an estimate. - **The family-package commission** — what GDC earns from the Union Supply program isn’t in any public contract (it runs through a prison-labor program, not a competitive bid). - **The pay for package-fulfillment labor** at Lee Arrendale — disputed between a federal “prevailing wage” claim and $0. - **What’s actually in the food** — GPS has open-records requests in flight for GCI’s product and ingredient sheets and for the statewide Master Menu. The Department’s first response was a fee estimate, not the records. We publish the verified figures and label the estimates as estimates. [How we verify →](/how-we-verify/) ## This is your tax money — and your family’s. Georgia feeds people at 54 cents a meal while marking up the food and goods their families are forced to buy. Tell the people who can change it. [Find your legislator](/find-your-legislator/) [Submit a report](/submit-a-report/) Cerrar [Report a Problem](https://support.gps.press/?system=gps-website)