Inmates go hungry without extra money for food

“If you were inside and had no one to put money in your account for you I can guarantee you’d go very bloody hungry”

People in Australian prisons are relying on buy-ups to eat properly, with many families on the outside struggling to provide the necessary money.

Some family members are providing hundreds of dollars per month to their incarcerated loved ones in order for them to buy enough food to ensure they don’t go hungry.

People in prison are allowed to buy extra food, such as snacks, pasta, barbeque kits and soft drinks, from an order sheet with set prices. 

These order sheets also include soap, clothes and oral hygiene items.

A number of people who have been incarcerated across the country have said that they would go hungry if they weren’t provided with extra money to purchase these buy-ups.

“You’re fucked, you can’t buy nothing,” one man who was recently incarcerated in Victoria says. “You get $12 a week or something and that has to go to your phone calls.”

The prices for food and drink in many prisons are often largely the same as outside of prison. But people in prison work for substantially less than the minimum wage.

In Victoria, those working in prison are paid a maximum of $1.12 per hour, while in New South Wales this figure is as low as 60c per hour.

This means that for an inmate in a Victorian prison, it would take more than one hour of work to afford a bottle of Coca-Cola, more than two hours of work for some toothpaste, and one hour of work for a small amount of soap.

The mother of two men who have been in prison in New South Wales says she sends $50 per week to them for these buy-ups, and extra for Christmas and birthdays. This money is used by them to buy things like toiletries, underwear, pillows, kettles, toasters and magazines.

“It’s hard to hear of people with no support outside not getting extras, and my boys are always very generous and do share, which then costs me more, but I raised them to think of others so I’m glad they do that,” she says.  

“Grown men certainly need more than the portions allowed in NSW prisons.”

A woman whose partner is in a Victorian prison says that not nearly enough food is provided to prisoners without the buy-ups.

“He says he would go hungry if he wasn't able to buy extra food each week from the canteen,” she says. “If you were inside and had no one to put money in your account for you I can guarantee you’d go very bloody hungry.”