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Comment by dpratt71 | Hacker News Reader

There is no mention of starvation in the title of the article nor in the text. I'm not sure why it's in the title of the submission. There is a link to a related article "2009: Ala. Sheriff Jailed For Starving Inmates". I assume it's the same article referenced in this article:

"In 2009, then-Sheriff Greg Bartlett of Morgan County was briefly tossed in jail after acknowledging that he had personally profited, to the tune of $212,000, from a surplus in the jail-food account. Prisoners testified about receiving meager meals."

Still, I don't see the justification for the use of the word "starvation" in that context, either.

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"Starving" probably not. Using expired food, creating gruels, making the inmates sick, forcing inmates to steal food with violence -- is a bit more accurate title. Here is an example Arizona sheriff laughing as he makes inmates rotten food [1]. I would suspect many inmates do begin the starvation process and become violently ill. (NOTE: many of these inmates have not been convicted of a crime, this is county jail).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGLDnRX10gA

> "A couple people I knew came through the jail, and they say they got meat maybe once a month, and every other day, it was just beans and vegetables," Qualls told Sheets. "I put two and two together and realized that that money could have gone toward some meat or something."

That hardly implies starvation. It might even be healthier than the typical US diet.

The provided budget for food is obviously going to be roughly set at the minimum necessary to provide barely adequate nutrition, because that's how legislatures operate. So if most of that money is being stolen by the sheriff, starvation is a perfectly reasonable term to use.

Many jails/prisons are spending no more than 50 cents or so per meal, and providing only two meals per day.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/07/07/what-s-in-a-pr...

Thanks, we've updated the headline from “Sheriff Legally Profits $750,000 from Starving Inmates” to that of the article. The guidelines ask submitters to please not editorialize like this.

"To starve" is sometimes used informally to mean "to withhold food from" without implying a long-term, chronically-deprived condition.

I do agree with you, though, that the author shouldn't have used the word.

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