Coeur d’Alene, ID – Inmate Denied Kosher Food

Coeur d’Alene, ID – Kootenai County Jail officials say a prisoner is not being given kosher food because he has failed to provide information to prove he is Jewish.

“He hasn’t taken the steps that we’ve requested of him to help us prove that he requires a special meal,” said Lt. Kim Edmondson of Kootenai County sheriff’s department.

Before being transferred to Idaho, Stephen Espalin, 53, was being held in a Colorado prison and serving consecutive sentences, one for attempted escape. While serving time in Colorado, he filed a legal request to face prosecution in Idaho, where police say he stole a car.
Espalin pleaded guilty to felony grand theft, and has agreed to a sentence of two years without parole. He was scheduled to be sentenced Friday.

Idaho officials called Colorado prison officials and were told Espalin had listed his religion there as Catholic, and wasn’t receiving a special diet.

Gary Friedman, chairman of Jewish Prisoner Services International, said people can’t self-convert to Judaism. Part of his job is validating or refuting prisoners’ claims that they are Jewish. “I too would be suspicious if someone on a bus ride from Colorado to Coeur d’Alene suddenly changed his religion,” Friedman said.
“At this point, it appears we have 20,000 non-Jews nationally claiming falsely to be Jewish. Almost all of them have another agenda.” Among the reasons, he said, are that kosher meals offer more variety then usual prison food.
Kosher meals typically come prepackaged and double-wrapped, he said.

The food issue is “hard because I feel like I’m going against our Torah,” Espalin said, adding that his mother is Jewish. “I’m going completely against my beliefs. If I didn’t eat it, they would put me in the hospital and force me anyway.”