Food Justice and the Moral Horror of Mass Incarceration

What does food justice in an era of mass incarceration demand of us? Granted, many might say justice, of any sort, demands decarceration, if not prison abolition. That difficult work, whether of decarceration or abolition, will, however, take time. What, then, should we do in the meantime—in particular, to make prisons more just? More to my point, how should we reform, even transform, the food policies and practices of today’s prisons in light of recent work on food justice?

My argument, “Food Justice and the Moral Horror of Mass Incarceration,” contends that putting criminal justice and food justice in conversation with one another has the power to benefit both. 

By underscoring the indispensable part food plays not only in well-being, but also in identity and community, food justice advocates highlight some of the most serious threats incarceration imposes on us: rotten food (chunky milk), unhealthy food (cake for breakfast to meet calorie counts), undignified food (“prison loaf”), and costly food (commissary foods taxed to provide basic services legislatures refuse to fund, clandestine “resistance meals” created at the risk of punishment or worse, and food “purchased” with sex) (WHO 2015; Smoyer 2017; Soble 2020). In short, food justice teaches criminal justice to see better.

At the same time, by reminding us of the competing, even conflicting, interests at the heart of ethics and political philosophy, criminal justice advocates highlight the need for a theory of justice that can guide our adjudication or balancing of those conflicts. In short, criminal justice teaches food justice to judge better. 

As some critics have observed, food justice advocates rarely make their moral theories or theories of justice explicit (DuPuis et al 2011). To be fair, food justice’s usual focus—namely, on practical results and clear cases of oppression—rarely requires theoretical clarification. What’s more, many food justice advocates understandably question the usefulness of ideal theory in our thoroughly non-ideal world.

The incarcerated individual, however, poses a hard case for the food justice advocate, one that calls for explicit ethical reasoning—or so I will argue. Incarcerated individuals pose a “hard case,” I say, because of their ambiguous character. 

On the one hand, the incarcerated individual has a lot in common with the usual subjects of food justice work. Many are, in fact, from the same oppressed communities, often of color, that occupy a central role in food justice activism. The racial and class inequities of the US carceral system are now well-known. Furthermore, regardless of background, incarcerated individuals both during and after incarceration often lack food security and autonomy, let alone food sovereignty. In addition to classism and racism, many face what we might call “felonism,” a socially and economically debilitating prejudice or contempt for someone due to a history of criminal conviction. 

On the other hand, the incarcerated individual is also quite different from the usual subjects of food justice. Unlike unincarcerated low-income community members, incarcerated individuals lack freedom or choice for understandable, perhaps even justifiable, reasons. Although some prisons—notably, the Halden Prison in Norway—provide residents the liberty to cook their own food in residential settings, complete with sharp cooking tools, such prisons are rare around the world, and non-existent in what some have called “The Incarcerated States of America” (Vera Institute 2018). What’s more, these progressive prisons raise tough questions. Is it fair for individuals who have committed heinous acts against others to have better living and cooking conditions than their low-income, unincarcerated counterparts? Are such comfortable conditions, in effect, disrespectful to the victims of their heinous crimes.

To complicate matters, even if greater food security or food autonomy in prison were feasible and fair, one might wonder whether incarcerated individuals ever should, or even could, enjoy food sovereignty. How could individuals with such little freedom have a fundamental say about the structure of their food systems? How could ostracized individuals play a pivotal part in a community-run food system? Moreover, to which food-sovereign community would the incarcerated individual belong: to a community back home or, instead, to the low-income, often rural, community surrounding the prison? And would correctional officers, who enforce incarceration, but who eat on site and often face food insecurity due to low wages, be members of the same food-sovereign community? If so, how could or should these groups work together?

In the end, the hard case calls for explicit moral theorizing. But what theory should food justice advocates endorse? And what are the particular practical policy recommendations that come with that theory? Drawing on what I call a "contractualist-principlism" that combines the work of T. M. Scanlon and bioethicists Tom Beauchamp and Jim Childress, I argue that incarcerated individuals have a prima facie (or pro tanto) positive right to greater food security and food autonomy. They may also have a right to greater food sovereignty, especially since so many incarcerated individuals play an essential—many would hasten to add, exploited—role in today’s food production systems.