The Winchester Journal Herald
March 2, 1961
Cooking for threshers would be no task for the Randolph county sheriff's wife. As jail matron, Mrs. Juanita Roberson has been chief cook and dietician at the Randolph county jail since her husband's election as sheriff in 1959. This week she has been preparing three meals a day for around twenty people besides her own family. The twenty were all non-paying guests. Naturally, since there is no way of telling who is going to be in jail from day to day, it is difficult to figure ahead with any exactness. But an advantage which might counter-balance this is that it wouldn't do the guests a bit of good to complain about their meals since they are a captive group who have no choice of menu.
Up until 1960 the jail was rarely as crowded as now. Last year, however, a new state law was passed, requiring that each prisoner to be sentenced must be held for a pre-sentence investigation and report by the county probation officer. Randolph county has no full-time probation officer.
The head of the county welfare department, Anthony Johnson, adds this job to his many other duties, and the pre-sentence reports are therefore sometimes delayed.
This means that a prisoner is often held for days or sometimes weeks, before he can be finally sentenced, although he may have been arraigned and have pleaded guilty. The delay caused by this new law shows up dramatically in jail reports. In 1959 a total of 5,537 meals were served at the jail to 416 prisoners, or an average of 16 meals each. But in 1960, after the passage of the new law, 8783 meals were served to only 377 prisoners, or an average of 23 meals each.
This month started off with a full house, Mrs. Roberson reports. By this time last year, she had served 76 people a total of 2,016 meals. It appears that business is going to be booming again this year. This week there were around 20 or more jail inmates every day
The budgeting of prisoner-meals is quite a task, when nobody can tell in advance how many "guests" will be on hand. Besides this, there is storage space at the jail for only three days supplies. Food is not purchased by bids, but from week to week through personal shopping.
Three times a day the shining aluminum plates and cups are lined up and filled, and passed through a grilled steel opening to the waiting prisoners. For breakfast, Mrs. Roberson says a typical meal would be cereal with milk and sugar, a roll or doughnut or orange, coffee or tea for the adults and milk or Kool-Aid for juveniles. The noon meal, the largest of the day, might be green beans and potatoes cooked together, ham, bread and butter, cookies and coffee. Supper might be soup and crackers, a sandwich, potato chips, fruit and coffee.
Holiday meals are special, prisoners sharing the Roberson's menu of turkey and trimmings at Christmas and Thanksgiving. This past Sunday, the menu was chicken and noodles with mashed potatoes.
Mrs. Ethel Roberson, the sheriff's mother, helps with preparation of the meals. The two women divide up the work, with the elder woman serving as chief bread-butterer and potato peeler, the younger as cup and tray filler and chief cook.
Jail-wise inmates, who have sampled food behind bars in many counties and states, say that eating at the local calaboose is tops. One or two young men who have put in considerable time behind bars here have even gotten fat on the fare. Several have been highly appreciative. "Food in some of them other jails is awful," one remarked thoughtfully. "I don't like to starve." Mrs. Roberson believes firmly that just because a man is in jail is no reason for him to go hungry. The bread-and-water routine is out as far as she is concerned. The prisoner's plates are filled at each meal with substantial helpings, but there are no seconds.
The sheriff's wife remembers only one complaint about her food. This came from a juvenile prisoner who, it turned out, complained because he missed his diet of soft-drinks, candy and cupcakes. Once in awhile a moody prisoner refuses to eat, but not often. Most have good appetites, having nothing much else to do than wait from meal to meal.
Some jails serve only two meals a day, the sheriff's wife observes, and often pretty poor meals at that. But this doesn't seem right to her. "It's bad enough to be in jail, without being hungry," she says firmly.
Recently, commissioners allotted the jail an increase for prisoners meals. The first 300 meals are now budgeted at 50 cents; 300 to 500, 45 cents; 500 to 1,000, 40 cents. "At the rate they are coming and staying, we'll probably be down to 35 cent meals before long," Mrs. Roberson said with resignation this week. But you have the feeling she'll manage to figure out a pretty appetizing menu for her prisoners, even on that allowance. By Anna Marie Gibbons, Win. Jrl-Hrld. March, 1961.
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