Exploring carceral food systems

Tensions, experiences and possibilities

Abstract

There is growing recognition of the inextricable relationship between food and punishment, a relationship buttressed by hyper-capitalism, colonialism, racism, and other harmful approaches to social control. This is abundantly clear in the context of carceral systems, where food is a tool of violence and control. Yet, in prison, food is also a tool of contestation and resistance, and a means of building community and solidarity. A critical examination of prison food is uniquely positioned to lay bare the failings of the prison system, and advance broader conversations on abolition, social justice, racism, colonialism, and capitalism. It forces us to reconsider and expand our understandings of food justice, and calls on us to include the lives, perspectives and experiences of incarcerated individuals in our visions of food system transformations and imaginaries.