Link: https://www.speciesunite.com/news-stories/should-incarcerated-people-receive-plant-based-food

In most U.S. prisons, inmates cannot legally obtain plant-based food - even
if they offer to pay for it themselves.

I think they should force random people to eat prison food every once in awhile so everyone knows how bad for you, low quality, and taste like crap. Or was it just me?

i agree, and i'd go a bit further too! i think people in governments should only be allowed to live in the worst conditions that they create for other people. i imagine they'd quickly arrange some policy changes & show that it was possible to do better all along.

Refusing plant-based food to inmates is a way for the state to scare people away from practicing civil disobedience, to say: laws matter, ethics doesn't, and we'll force you to do unethical things just to punish you for interfering with us doing unethical things in a way we codified as the law. Denying temporarily incapacitated people (students, inmates, patients) plant-based foods is also a way to put pressure on them to conform and not question any unethical decisions made at the top of the hierarchy; you don't conform - we punish you by making it impossible to eat together with your peers multiple years in a row. It can't even be explained post factum as a cost-cutting measure, because the state heavily subsidizes people breeding animals to kill and eat them; it's either a conscious or an ignorant (which is inexcusable for public representatives, as it's their job to learn and support the needs of everyone they represent) decision to bully certain groups of people whom it's socially acceptable to bully.

Let me put it out there, I do not believe in jails or prisons. I do not believe anyone should be jailed or prisoned, no matter what they have done. It is easy way for societies blame the victims that react in behaviors societies either reserve for Fewer, Fewer & Fewer Rich-Super Rich Economic Classes/Owners or for no one, when in reality it is the failure of societies that these people have done unwanted behaviors. I believe in rehabilitation of people's unwanted behaviors, while existing in the greater communities.

Yes, it should be an option,

There is a ton about life's options-choices all of us must be given, but of course The Capital/Worse of Capitalism The USA is about privileging the fewer & fewer people over the more & more people.
The Capital/Worse of Capitalism The USA have a backwards approach to jails & prisons, basically throw as many poor & different-challenged people in systems as possible & created crazy, crazy & crazy over the top punishments for all behaviors, even ones formerly never imagined as crimes that results in far, far & far too many of them going to jails & prisons for as long as possible & as cheaply as they can, so that sick Rich-Super Rich Economic Classes/Owners make even greater profits-wealth, all they (not just the jailers & prisoners of the systems) really care about.
At least Democratic Socialist Scandinavian countries do the reverse of systems to trap people, barely jail & imprison people/worse crimes/real world danger to greater people, instead do work release (like in The Capital/Worse of Capitalism The USA series & movies do for littering & such) & probation (like The Capital/Worse of Capitalism The USA does for those in prisons & lucky enough to get out before their time is served).
From this post, Internet article & I never known either (lucky I), thus naturally The Capital/Worse of Capitalism The USA does not offer what every single person in the world MUST be intitled to, options-choices, like at least Democratic Socialist Scandinavian countries do.

I disagree with that, just create serious activism to change things.

People that already understand should NOT have to be punished in that way.