Why so many US prison inmates choose to eat kosher

Some 24,000 incarcerated people in the US eat kosher meals. Even some neo-Nazis. Why?

A NEONAZI GOES to prison and tells the corrections officers he needs to be served only kosher food. As folklorist Steve Siporin writes, this sounds like the setup for a Jewish joke.

But it’s actually a real thing that happens. In prisons across the country, a significant number of incarcerated people tell their jailers they’re Jewish to get access to kosher meals.

In 2000, Siporin writes, the passage of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalised Persons Act made all US prisons responsible for accommodating their charges’ religious dietary requirements.

Before that, religious practitioners in prisons couldn’t always count on getting meals they could eat. During the 1971 Attica Prison riot, one of the complaints of the rebelling prisoners was that Muslims were served pork three times a day.

Siporin quotes a 2012 report that finds 24,000 US incarcerated people eat kosher. Of that number, just one sixth are Jewish.

The ruling had an unintended consequence. Siporin quotes a 2012 report that finds 24,000 US incarcerated people eat kosher. Of that number, just one sixth are Jewish.

Some prison officials are well aware of this issue but may need to respect the wishes of the incarcerated anyway. In one case, a Missouri federal judge ruled that a man who claimed to be Jewish must be given kosher food.

This despite the fact that he had been raised Christian and hadn’t formally converted—and he had been part of a white supremacist prison gang and owned pictures of Adolph Hitler.

The judgment noted that the Missouri Department of Corrections doesn’t “make determinations as to whether the inmates are sincere in their religious beliefs.”

FULL STORY The surprising answer to who eats kosher in prison (JStor Daily)

Cartoon: Avi Katz