Hall sheriff may outsource jail food services and/or reduce inmate meals

GAINESVILLE - Inmates at the Hall County Detention Center may soon find themselves getting one less meal each day.

Sheriff Steve Cronic is considering cutting from three to two the number of meals the prisoners get, as a way of reducing costs.

Other options are cutting back to two hot meals and one cold meal per day, outsourcing the jail's food services to a private vendor, or a combination of these alternatives. He thinks he can come up with a plan that will save 25-30 percent on jail food services.

Cronic says any of the plans he proposes involve fewer inmate meals or changes in the kinds of meals they get, are within federal guidelines governing the feeding of prisoners.

Meals are now prepared in-house by people employed by the sheriff's department. Sheriff Cronic says if that work is outsourced, the meals would still be prepared at the jail but by a private vendor. Those people now working for the county in jail food services would become employees of the private company, according to Cronic.