I don't believe the maths for this story fully adds up. Back of envelope calculation: prison population of Oklahoma:25000. Cost of meals per prisoner per day:

I don't believe the maths for this story fully adds up. Back of envelope calculation: prison population of Oklahoma:25000. Cost of meals per prisoner per day: $10. (UK hospitals budget £5 per patient per day so $10 per day is probably accurate to the nearest power of 10...). Days in year: 365. Hence, it should come to ~$91 million if all prisoners are getting all their meals. So we have $20 million saved by removing the greedy ones, greedy ones defined as stealing an extra meal for brekkie, din-dins and tea. So $111 million is my guestimate of how much the food bill comes to because of them scoffing their way to add $20 million on top. That would be equivalent to ~30.5k prisoners, therefore one in five of the in-mates is massively stealing extra portions every mealtime, every day. Realistically is $10 spent per day per prisoner in Oklahoma? Sounds high to me. Would a prisoner that steals take 2 * of everything all the time, at every opportunity? They could steal more or they might steal less. So there may be more than 20% on the take for it to come to $20 million. A third of them could be habitually getting more than their allowed mealings. Articles like this with lofty claims should have some numbers on there, rather than just pure story-interpretation. I suspect that Sysco charge a lot more than UK hospital contractors do and that they deliver a lot less. Numbers please!