By: Food Matters

The World Health Organisation has emphasised the importance of seeing prisons as whole food systems. In this paper, Food Matters highlights numerous opportunities for food to play a broader role in prison life. In January 2023, Food Matters organised a roundtable workshop to discuss the issue of food in prisons, involving experts from the voluntary sector, academia, and individuals with lived prison experience. The central theme was the significant role of food in prisons and its impact on the lives of those held in them. We coupled the findings from this workshop with a review of related policy and literature in an interim paper which was shared with key stakeholders, including His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, the Care Quality Commission, the Independent Monitoring Board, Clinks and other voluntary sector organisations. This paper explores the crucial role of food in shaping prisoners' identities and relationships and its potential to have positive impacts in prisons, including fostering relationships; promoting education, exercise and meaningful activities; enhancing cultural understanding improving physical and mental health; enhancing safety; and reducing reoffending. Food Matters has concluded that food should move from being a functional aspect of prisons to become a focal point for various activities and improvements to prison regimes. Key findings and considerations include: Opportunities for building on existing initiatives: Positive initiatives related to food and nutrition have been undertaken in prisons by voluntary sector organisations, supported by HMPPS and/or individual governors and more recently by HMPPS itself in promoting self-production initiatives and creating healthy recipes. However, limited resources and short-term funding have hindered the sustainability and longterm impact of these efforts. There is potential for collectively sharing best practices and building an evidence base for food and growing-related initiatives across prisons. Opportunities for greater transparency over food quality, standards, and sustainability following strengthened government commitments to adopting sustainable food procurement, the introduction of new nutritional guidance for public catering, and requirements for data reporting on food procurement and waste. More broadly, there is potential for widespread adoption of mainstream public health initiatives in prisons, including accreditation schemes for caterers and food suppliers. There is also scope for enhanced independent inspection and parliamentary oversight to encourage more creative approaches to be taken, building on a thematic review that explored the role of food in connection, comfort, and mental health support in prisons. Opportunities for HMPPS to adopt a strategic approach to developing food-related initiatives, integrated within a range of policies and practices such as rehabilitation, learning and skills development, family ties, and well-being and ensure that opportunities for self-catering, communal dining, and sustainable food production are maximized in redevelopment and new building projects.

Brighton , UK: Food Matters, 2024. 42p.

By Amanda Chan and Anna Nathanson

Prison food is poor quality. The regulations which govern prison food are subpar and unenforceable by prisoners, due in large part to Sandin v. Conner and the Prison Litigation Reform Act. This Article aims to draw attention to the dire food conditions in prisons, explain the lax federal administrative law that permits these conditions, highlight the role of Sandin v. Conner and the Prison Litigation Reform Act in curtailing prisoners’ rights, and criticize the role of the private entity American Correctional Association in enabling mass neglect of prison food. The authors recommend that the Prison Litigation Reform Act be repealed, that Sandin v. Conner be overturned, and that Food Service Manual standards be improved to provide prisoners with more calories, more options, and more variety. Prisoners will be better positioned to enforce food rights in the courts under the recommended regime.

29 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 1009 (2021),

By Leslie Soble, Kathryn Stroud, and Marika Weinstein,

A person sentenced to prison in the United States serves three years on average. That’s more than 3,000 meals behind bars (far more for people serving longer sentences), all typically high in salt, sugar, and refined carbohydrates and low in essential nutrients—a diet that for decades everyone else has been advised to avoid. The food itself and the conditions under which it is served are harmful to physical and mental health and can erode self-esteem, with immediate and long-term impacts. The damaging and degrading prison food experience is a symptom of a larger systemic malady: our dependence on a dehumanizing criminal justice system to address harm. Like every other aspect of mass incarceration, this is an issue of racial and economic injustice: Lower-income communities of color, where affordable healthy food is scarce, disproportionately lose members to prison and then struggle to support them when they return home in worse health. In this way, prisons function as out-of-sight food deserts, perpetuating patterns of poor health in communities that already experience profound inequities. This six-part report, the first national investigation of its kind, explores these and other troubling trends in prison food. Resulting from 18 months of fact-finding by Impact Justice, our report centers the perspectives of people who have been incarcerated while also examining food service policies and practices that affect 1.3 million people incarcerated in state prisons nationwide. The report also highlights some promising emerging efforts in a handful of prisons where nourishing food is becoming a priority, illuminating the potential for change. The broadening awareness that access to good food is a fundamental human right has spawned urban farms, mobile farmers’ markets, and land co-ops, revitalized school lunch, and more. This report makes clear that the growing food justice movement must incorporate the millions of people inside prison walls, and shows how diverse stakeholders can work together in common purpose.

Oakland, CA: Impact Justice, 2020. 137p.

By The Vermont Law and Graduate School, Center for Agriculture and Food Systems

Approximately 2 million people are incarcerated in the United States. While law- and policymakers have focused some attention on improving conditions for individuals who are incarcerated, the issue of food in prisons has not been at the forefront of prison policy reform. In recent years, there has been increased attention focused on this issue in New England—a region marked by some successful efforts that reduced costs, increased access to fresh local foods, and provided skills and training. Many correctional officials and food service managers in the New England region and beyond are working hard with limited means in a policy landscape that often makes it difficult to increase the quality of prison food. This report is intended to assist policymakers, correctional facility administrators, food service managers, food justice advocates, and the public in understanding the complex set of constitutional, federal, and state laws and policies impacting the prison food system to identify opportunities for reform in the New England region. People of color are disproportionately represented in the prison population; incarceration rates are 1.3 to 6 times higher for people of color than for white people. Notably, Black Americans comprise 38 percent of the prison population despite constituting 13 percent of the US population. In some New England states these disparities are even more stark. Both Connecticut and Maine maintain a disparity of 9:1 between Black and white individuals who are incarcerated, and Massachusetts leads the country in ethnic disparities. While poverty represents both a substantial cause and effect of incarceration, many individuals who are incarcerated also demonstrate additional factors of socioeconomic marginalization, including food and nutrition insecurity, low educational attainment, and high unemployment rates, as compared to the general population. In the US, rates of food insecurity and very low food security are “significantly higher than the national average” for non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic households. Consequently, for Black individuals who are incarcerated, food insecurity may present a challenge prior to, during, and after incarceration. Additionally, since many individuals continue to experience food and nutrition insecurity upon release due to difficulty securing employment, the health impacts can be ongoing. Much public attention focuses on privately owned prisons, yet less than eight percent of the prison population is housed in them. In fact, most individuals who are incarcerated are held in publicly operated federal or state prisons, facilities which are often required to follow procurement policies and guidelines for purchasing food. This provides an opportunity for states to consider developing procurement policies directed at the same goals as other institutional procurement policies: economic development through local preference and improved health.

South Royalton, VT: Vermont Law and Graduate School, 2023. 54p.