Inmates feast on Virginia Beach jail's online menu

VIRGINIA BEACH

The ambience is cinder-block, tan and institutional.

The dress code is strictly orange, the jumpsuit variety.

The prices aren't for penny pinchers.

But the food - Philly steak sandwiches, hot wings and fried shrimp - sure beats the day-to-day prison diet.

And it can be ordered with a few clicks of a mouse.

In Virginia Beach, family and friends can go online to buy the equivalent of diner fare and care packages loaded with snacks for city jail inmates. It's part of Sheriff Ken Stolle's recently launched CareMart program.

The Web site, www.vbsocaremart.com, describes the steak-and-cheese sandwich as, "OMG! Mouth watering good!" Smothered with peppers, onions and mushrooms, it promises to "make your tastebuds water."

For the health-conscious inmate, there's the salad and grilled chicken.

On Valentine's Day, the Sheriff's Office offered a sugar-rush package with chocolate chip cookies, candy bars and M&Ms.

"We're not coddling anybody," Stolle said. "Our philosophy is, on the taxpayers' dime, they get the minimum. If they want more than that, they have to pay for it."

And pay they do.

Two chili cheese dogs with fries costs $8.99. A pint of cookies-and-cream ice cream runs $4.79. A game package that includes a Sudoku puzzle book, a legal pad and a deck of cards to "help pass the time!" is $30.

Stolle estimates the website makes $9,000 a week.

His efforts to bring in revenue began in August when the Sheriff's Office dropped a private vendor and took over the inmate canteen, which sells toiletries and snacks to prisoners directly. In the fall, Stolle launched Fresh Favorites, a menu of restaurant-style meals. Originally, it was available only at the jail but went online in December with the launch of the CareMart site.

CareMart has some of the canteen items, but expands on them and includes the Fresh Favorites menu. Stolle believes CareMart and Fresh Favorites eventually will generate $400,000 to $500,000 profit for the department.

He set aside about $300,000 to start CareMart, including developing the website and billing system, and hiring staff. One full-time and two part-time employees run the program.

On a recent afternoon, the employees watched as a group of inmates checked orders on a computer and then scanned packs of ramen noodles, bags of potato chips and chocolate bars on a machine similar to a grocery store checkout. They loaded the goodies into clear plastic bags, which are delivered to the cells once a week.

The startup costs came from the inmate canteen fund, a restricted pool of money under the sheriff's care.

Profits from inmate canteen spending within the jail must be used "within the facility for educational, recreational and other purposes for the benefit of the inmates," according to state law.

But Stolle said he is trying to push more of the purchases through the website because those profits can be used for other projects, including upgrades to the jail's cameras and security. That money doesn't come directly from the inmates, but from friends and family outside the jail, and it offsets the cost of other projects to taxpayers, he said.

Walter Kucharski, the state's auditor of public accounts, said he has never seen a sheriff's website selling food and other care packages for inmates. Kucharski said he isn't sure if the same state restrictions on the inmate canteen fund would apply to the profits of the online CareMart program.

Stolle, however, must get City Council approval before he spends any of the profits from CareMart, Kucharski said.

"I can't say that he can't do what he's doing," Kucharski said. "I've never heard of it done this way before."

Deirdre Fernandes, (757) 222-5121, deirdre.fernandes@pilotonline.com