Allegheny County Jail

Its jail, get over it! It i not a hotel or country club. you should not like it or want to go back

Is their any special meals or snacks for christmas or thanksgiving?

For both Thanksgiving and Christmas, the special meal would be for the lunch, and the only things special about them would be that you would get real turkey (not soybean based with various other fillers) and the dessert on the tray will be of a little better quality and difference (like pumkin pie for thanksgiving) this would be compared to the normal desert menu, which is two small vanilla cream filled sandwich cookies (like an oreo, but smaller and lesser quality), or a peice of cake (mostly vanilla) sometimes there is a little icing on top, or apple sauce, or apples, or apple crisp (apples with a brown sugar and flour crisp mixed in). Portions from tray to tray vary greatly, but in any case it is usually never enough, either in quantity or quality. Wayne Markham is the person in charge of Canteen Services who provides for the jail. Having experinced the food service there for a lengthy stay I can tell you first hand that the food service needs correcting.
***They want to call it a Prison and not a jail, but don't meet Prison requirements.
***As I said, the portions can be significantly different from to the next tray (ex. first tray might have a nice size peice of cake and the next a very small peice that has been turned upside down and smashed).
***They jail uses food as a form of payment for their workers (an extra tray each meal), for the ones who can not become workers, oh well.
***There are other things, but I will leave it at this for now.

How expensive is the commissary? Is there a list of what is available and how much is a reasonable amount for the inmates books?

The commissary is very expensive and is run by Keefe Commissary. To give examples, a raman noodle package (there brand is by Maruchan) that you can get for about .10 to .25 cents from your stores cost .90 cents off of commissary, candy bars, all regular size are $1.10, a cheap toothpaste they call Coolwave is $2.06 (couple ounces), a little travel pillow that they give you free on the airlines is $6. The only thing I can say is not too bad is for about $60 you can get a pair of decent tennis shoes from commissary. An inmate can order up to $150 a week in commissary excluding shoes. An inmate should not need to get that much all of the time. If the inmate is going to be there for a while (sentenced) then $150 for the first week (startup costs excluding tennis shoes if needed)is OK. After that it depends on the inmate, but about $30 a week should do it, but like I said, some individuals who are bigger may need more, like about $50 a week. If an individual needs to eat a lot and does not have the money to get sufficient commissary and your bond is less than $100,000 or you are not on floor 4 or above, apply tfor the kitchen, they do not pay money and you will workd 7 days a weed, but you will eat like a christmas turkey.

Good information, do you know if there is a committee or group that is already formed that voices its concerns regarding this issue...?

The commissary is very expensive!! Jail functions almost like a for-profit corporation. The inmates are fed very little so that they are hungry and forced to pay a lot of money at the commissary. And since they have no other options, the commissary can charge as much as they want. So when possible, help out your friend/family when they say they need money on their books.