Calls are being made to curtail kosher food which is a hot commodity in prisons. Rabbi Menachem Katz of the Aleph Institute says the problem can easily be solved.

Naomi Zeveloff reports in The Forward:

The tiny population of religious Jews in prison has plenty of company when it comes to keeping kosher behind bars.

A number of secular Jews, messianic Jews, Black Hebrew Israelites and, in many cases, people with no Jewish background at all eat a traditional Jewish diet.

Jews, according to one estimate, make up just one-sixth — or about 4,000 — of the 24,000 inmates who eat kosher food in American prisons. And since kosher food can cost more than twice as much as regular fare, it's costing taxpayers millions to feed all those who want to avoid treyf.

"We want them to be very careful about who they give kosher food to," said Menachem Katz, director of prison and military outreach at the Aleph Institute, a Chabad-affiliated social services group.

"We don't want them to give kosher food to every Tom, Dick and Harry if they say they are Jewish."

...The popularity of kosher food among non-Jewish inmates is one reason that many prisons around the country are seeking to curtail or change their Jewish dietary programs. But advocates for Jewish inmates say that prisons could easily solve this problem by limiting kosher food to Jews.

"They want to throw the baby out with the bath water," Katz said. "Rather than get into the nitty-gritty, they say, 'Let's just destroy the whole thing'."

Kosher food is a hot commodity in prisons for a number of reasons. Some prisoners simply think it tastes better; many others believe it is safer than standard-issue prison fare, according to prison chaplains and advocates. Kosher food also often comes prepackaged, making it easy to trade or sell among inmates.

In the federal corrections system, there are some 4,127 individuals receiving a so-called Certified Religious Diet out of a total of 217,000 inmates, or about 2% of the population.

The diet costs $2.33 per meal as opposed to $0.99 for regular prison fare, and accommodates Jews and non-Jews with religious dietary needs.

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