COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — 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 the 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 in September 2005. Rather than drop the felony grand theft charge, Idaho officials had him transferred to Idaho in March, and shortly thereafter he filed a request for kosher food.

Espalin pleaded guilty to felony grand theft in May in 1st District Court, and has agreed to a sentence of two years without parole, said Denise Rosen, a Kootenai County deputy prosecutor. He was scheduled to be sentenced Friday.

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

Federal law protects prisoners' rights when it comes to religion.

Still, 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, and that some inmates consider them more sanitary.

"We surprisingly have found out the most common thing is they have paranoia about how their food is prepared," he said. "They believe they are safer."

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 told the Coeur d'Alene Press, 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."

Jeff Ray, a spokesman for the Idaho Department of Correction, said Idaho inmates choose from a few different meal types, committing to that meal type for a month.

"Instead of offering a new meal every day, we have a form they must fill out on a monthly basis," Ray said. "But none of the food is fancy. No matter which food you choose, you're not going to enjoy any particular advantage. It's prison."

Edmondson said Espalin has also filed claims over various medical conditions, which she could not reveal due to privacy rights, but which she said proved nonexistent when Espalin was examined by a doctor.

"As far as the Kootenai County Jail, we've done everything we can to accommodate him as an inmate," she said.