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I like to think I’m a pretty decent kind of fella. Oh sure, in the past, I’ve broken a few tiny laws, possibly a few bigger ones, but nothing that was going to get me any sort of hard time. I would like to think this is because I was raised properly and because I have a good sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. There’s probably some truth to that.

There’s also another pretty good reason: prison really scares the piss out of me. Just thinking about going to jail can send a shiver down my spine, so I can’t imagine what actually being there would be like. It’s probably not that simple, but I think the fact that prisons are a scary place is one of the main reasons most folks don’t go around committing crimes.

Let’s take bank robbery, for example. Everyone has seen enough movies to know that the banks are just supposed to give you the money, no questions asked. This may or may not be true, but it’s in the movies and I’m a simpleton, so I assume that’s how it all works. Without punishment, we’d all be going into banks when we were short on cash and handing them a robbery note. So robbing a bank appears to be as easy as getting into Lindsay Lohan’s pants. Still, what makes both of those things super scary is what will happen afterward. Both offer severe retribution, one in the form of jail, the other in the form of a social disease combined with low self-esteem. This kind of retribution can be a really good deterrent.

Jail isn’t supposed to be nice or fun or anything besides the biggest suck that ever sucked a suck. It is the government deciding to ground you so severely that not only can you not go to the big dance but you’ll also probably be physically and anally assaulted on a pretty regular basis.

Sure, the sodomy in jail may be overstated in many cases, but I think that’s also a good thing. It would sure as hell make me think twice before doing anything wrong. Actually, I might think three or four times, maybe more. In my mind, the more jail sucks, the more an intelligent person would want to do everything in their power to stay the hell away from it.

So, jail is bad, but because of the tough economic times, it may be getting even worse. No, they aren’t waterboarding the inmates or taking away visiting rights or even adding three more mandatory rape sessions a day. They are cutting back on the food. I would guess the cuisine leaves a little bit to be desired in the first place, so this might seem like a good thing, but I would imagine they still get hungry.

Georgia inmates already don’t get served lunch on the weekends. I’m guessing they don’t give each of them 20 dollars and send them off to the local Friday’s either, so apparently, they just don’t eat lunch on the weekends. It might be a good idea to hide a few pieces of fruit in your body cavities so you have something to munch on during those long rainy Saturday afternoons. Ohio is looking into dropping breakfast and lunch and offering brunch instead. Wow, that sounds super classy: brunch in prison. I would imagine the omelet station and the fresh homemade breads are out of this world in a correctional institution. “Have you tried the poached salmon? Divine, I tell you.”

The prisoners still get the required calories for the day — 2,800 for men, 2,300 for women — but that doesn’t seem like much. Geez Louise, I’ve ingested that many calories from beer alone in a 24-hour period. It’s not all bad, though. The inmates can still buy snacks, such as instant soup and beef sticks, to help them hang on until that next meal comes around. I’ve also heard they toss a lot of salads in their downtime, but I think that may be something completely different.

Forget trading that new inmate with the pretty face to another prisoner for a couple of packs of cigarettes. I would guess the going rate now for a fresh piece of meat is … well, a few packages of cured meat. Trading beautiful sodomy for a few pieces of jerky is apparently just another sacrifice today’s convicts must face. Correctional officials are afraid that all these cutbacks might make the prison population a little grumpy. It makes sense. If I remember my history correctly, that riot in Attica during the ’70s was caused by some bad chipped beef.

The problem is that even crap-assed food won’t end up being much of a deterrent. If the fear of prison and all that goes along with it doesn’t work, then there’s really not much else to scare a person with. I would suppose most people committing crimes have to assume they’ll get away with it then. Judging by the prison overcrowding, this may not be a really sound way of thinking. We’ve been told crime doesn’t pay since we were children, but for some reason, it’s just not sinking in. I’ll tell you this: Being locked in a room without food for long periods of time would sure cure my fat ass of any criminal activity. If nothing else, it’s yet another creepy thought to keep me from robbing that bank next week.