Let’s begin with the basic premise that how a country treats its prisoners is indicative of that country’s moral compass and ethos. In America, we have no firm grounding in how we approach the true purpose of prison. Most of us are unresolved as to the question of whether the prison system should punish those in it or help prisoners contribute to our society, and this inability to decide has made its way into our politics and state propositions. Yet we seem to have all agreed and acquiesced to the idea that our prisoners should cost us as little as possible, require as few resources as possible, and be served nothing but bare survival portions of food that most of us would dread eating.
While anger and vengeance are human emotions, let’s acknowledge that fact that punishing those who have committed crimes does not produce anything of value for our society. Punishment might make people regret their behavior, but it also might fuel resentment and produce a cycle of negative behaviors. If we treat prison as a monastic experience, a time of rehabilitation, reflection, self-possession, growth, and an opportunity to learn a new skill or approach, as a society we might actually benefit from the incarcerated once they are released.
If we want those incarcerated to improve themselves and be able to contribute to our country in a productive way, we need to overhaul how we treat them, and we should start this process by reconsidering what food we provide them with. People that are undernourished have trouble thinking clearly, have trouble reflecting, are often forced into survival mode, and can have mood swings and agitations that prevent them from improving their lives and the lives of those that they are in community with.
Prison food represents the worst of our institutional systems. While much change is still needed in our nursing homes and public schools, there has been a significant revolution and rethinking involved by each of these systems to reconsider what food is served and how it is presented to our children and elders. Yet in our prisons, whether at the county, state, or national level, we all seem to have agreed to serve the cheapest food and the smallest portions possible. According to The Marshall Project, while the American Correctional Association recommends that prisoners receive three meals per day, due to pressure from state legislators often the inmates are restricted to two meager meals per day. Prison meals are often outsourced to large industrialized food service operators that are severely restricted in what they spend per meal, often requested to produce reasonably caloric meals for 56 cents to $1.77, depending on the state and county (Argus Leader).
Imagine subsisting on the following meal combinations, yet alone thriving and trying to transform your life and reform yourself:
Breakfast: ½ cup canned fruit cocktail, ½ cup fruit juice, 1 cup cold cereal, 1 cup 2% milk, 1 biscuit, 1 ½ cups country gravy, 3 slices of margarine, optional coffee.
No lunch
Dinner: 2 pieces of cornbread, 1 slice of cake, 1 cup ‘vitamin’ beverage, 1 cup baked beans, 1 ½ cups meat fried rice, 2 slices of margarine.
(Gordon County, Georgia)
Breakfast: 8 oz. Pineapple juice, 8 oz. 2% milk, ½ cup cream of wheat, 3 oz. scrambled eggs from a carton, 1 slice of wheat bread, 1 slice of margarine, coffee.
Lunch: 1 slice of apple cobbler, 1 cup milk, ½ cup canned green beans, ½ cup mashed potatoes, 3 oz. roast turkey, ¼ cup cornbread stuffing, a spoon of gravy, 1 slice wheat bread, coffee.
Dinner: ½ cup canned apricots, 1 cup milk, 1 cup chicken and dumplings, 1 cup tossed salad coffee.
(Butte-Silver Bow County, Montana)
In the infamous Joe Arpaio’s Mariposa County, Arizona, he has enacted cost cutting measures to limit inmates to two meals per day, banned meat consumption in favor of soy, and brought the food costs down to 10-40 cents per day (Marshall Project).
Forcing prisoners to eat these processed, high carbohydrate, dairy-heavy meals with little protein and almost no fresh fruits or vegetables is a combination that will not only wreck the health of these people, it will not give them enough sustenance and nutrition to do much reflective thinking or engaging in life affirming behavioral changes. By feeding prisoners this food, we are ensuring that they will feel like crap day in and day out and will barely have time to think beyond how hungry they are; when they get out, they most likely will be resentful and hateful to a country or community that treated them this way.
According to Washington Corrections Watch, prior to the industrialized food service operators taking over meal service, most prison food was locally produced and emphasized whole grains and more fresh vegetables, but in “In 1995…Department of Corrections (DOC) Food Services began to deteriorate after the state decided to turn to Correctional Industries (CI), the state-run prison-industrial conglomerate. CI was supposed to save the state money by concentrating all food production at a single DOC Food Factory at the Airway Heights Correctional Center. Local prison facility bakeries, dairies, and farms were shuttered. Problems were noted from the outset. State health department inspectors, responding to a barrage of complaints, cited the food factory for food-handling violations in 1996. Policymakers also did not understand the deleterious effect on human health of exclusively consuming processed food containing added sugar, sodium, and soy every single day for many years.” These deleterious effects have now been widely recognized by our medical community, yet we still continue to serve this type of food to our inmates. What would happen if we returned to a more localized approach and perhaps even taught our prisoners how to plant, grow, harvest, and cook their own vegetables in a safe manner?
While the law states that people with documented medical issues have the right to be served food that complies with their allergies and needs, in practice often a different story is told. There have been numerous accounts of prisoners with life-threatening dietary restrictions who have had their doctor’s recommendations ignored or not adequately paid attention to. Peter Incerra, who was incarcerated in Collins Correctional Facility in Collins, New York on grand larceny charges, suffers from celiac disease. His diagnosis was confirmed to the prison officials by his doctor, yet even when he petitioned and fought to receive his gluten free meals, his pleas were ignored. Incerra lost 25 pounds in just four months of incarceration (The Marshall Project). Celiac disease sufferers, when not treated to a proper diet, suffer from painful diarrhea, vomiting, bloating, gas, fatigue, weight and bone loss, low blood counts and anemia, and irritability (The Mayo Clinic). Yes, special meals are more expensive to make, but often they are essential for an inmate’s survival.
Consider what could happen if we change our approach to food service in prisons and offer healthy, sustainable meals that contain fresh vegetables. Consider what would happen not just in prisons for prisoners, but to our whole community. Consider what we could communicate to our jailed brothers and sisters by providing them with nourishing and soul-filling meals that allow them to get enough strength to do the hard work of reflection and internal revolution. Consider how we would feel giving this nourishment to people who are human and have made mistakes in life, but could be on a path to change their outlook and behaviors. Consider what would happen if we dedicated an acre or three per large prison for a vegetable farm, taught the prisoners how to plant, cultivate, and harvest organic vegetables with safe equipment such as their bare hands and minds. Consider what could happen once these individuals are released into our communities, what they could build, farm, cook, and contribute to each town they reside in.
The naysayers will claim that prison farms are just not realistic. Who wants to put more money into a system for those who have not respected the laws of our country? Yet when we dig beneath the surface and realize that many prisoners have been racially profiled or unfairly targeted because of their race, a new awareness emerges. When we think purposefully about how such a farm might be set up, we learn that it actually will not cost much and will pay us back financially in terms of skill building. There is usually a significant amount of vacant, unused land within prison walls or surrounding them. On an acre or less, a decent farm is possible. We could build the soil with composted leftovers from prison meals and have small earthworm farms within each prison. Our inmates could tend to the soil, as well as the cultivation and harvesting of the plants, and once they get release, they can use this new skill to contribute to their local communities in a meaningful way as gardeners, landscapers, farmers, farm managers, and farm workers. Yes, this add a few hours to a warden or supervisor’s plate, but once the initial plans are completed, the management of such a program would not require more than an hour per week on average. The guards can supervise the inmates in the farm just like they would with any prison activity, and in no till farming, no equipment is needed but the inmates’ hands. At most, the plot of land might be rototilled once per year in the early morning, before the prisoners begin working the farm’s land. The vegetables grown could then prepared for prison meals, thus reducing the cost of purchasing canned green beans and processed potato products. Imagine what a serving or two of fresh greens or tomatoes per day could do for the inmates’ morale and overall physical health.
Punishment, starvation, and malnourishment will just get us cyclical results with prisoners, and not get us what we really want: a society where each person contributes in a positive and creative way for the betterment of all.
Works Cited
“Celiac Disease.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 21 Oct. 2020, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/celiac-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20352220. Accessed 2 April 2021.
Ferguson, Danielle. “Cost to Feed County Jail Inmates to Increase to $1.24 per Meal.” Argus Leader, Argus Leader, 6 May 2018, www.argusleader.com/story/news/2018/05/01/cost-feed-county-jail-inmates-increase-1-24-per-meal/568052002/. Accessed 1 April 2021.
Santo, Alysia, and Lisa Iaboni. “What’s in a Prison Meal?” The Marshall Project, The Marshall Project, 7 July 2015, www.themarshallproject.org/2015/07/07/what-s-in-a-prison-meal. Accessed 1 April 2021.
Washington Corrections Watch. washingtoncorrectionswatch.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/final_correcting-food-policy-in-wa-prisons_prison-voice-wa.pdf. Accessed 1 April 2021.
