Scottish Prison Launches Investigation Into Inmates Going Kosher
(JTA) — Inspectors have demanded an investigation into why a Scottish jail is serving up kosher meals to more than 100 prisoners when hardly any of its inmates are Jewish, a British weekly reported.
The daily cost of normal prison meals per prisoner is about $2.50, but a report by the Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland said that kosher food was four times as expensive, resulting in an extra annual bill of approximately $313,000, The Times of London reported Tuesday.
Inmates are believed to have started asking for kosher food after watching “Orange is the New Black,” the American television show in which a character named Cindy Hayes, played by Adrienne Moore, converts to Judaism to get “better quality food,” as she explains it in the series.
At one Edinburgh prison, 111 prisoners are being served kosher meals, and it is thought that hundreds of prisoners across the United Kingdom have applied to change their religion to Judaism since the episode aired in 2015.
In 2013-14 there were nine Jewish prisoners in Scotland’s 15 jails, according to The Times. The prison service report said that an urgent investigation was needed into the legitimacy of the claims by the inmates at the prison.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
