Abstract
This article builds on existing knowledge of inmate resistance by analyzing formerly incarcerated women’s narratives about prison food. Participants described trying to secure extra cafeteria portions, hoarding food, smuggling and stealing food, and cooking and eating in the cells—all to resist prison power and gain some control over their lives by managing what, how, when, and with whom they ate. These data shed light on prison life and suggest changes to food policy to curb inmate resistance and bolster the rehabilitative potential of correctional facilities.
Keywords
Inmate resistance is a central dimension of incarceration that is critical to understanding prison life. Given the limits of official authority (Sykes, 1958), power in the prison environment is neither absolute nor fixed (Bosworth & Carrabine, 2001). Instead, control is constantly negotiated as incarcerated people meet institutional regulations and policy with differing degrees of resistance. This resistance exists along a continuum from overt and organized rebellion (e.g., riots, hunger strikes) to concealed acts of individual dissent (e.g., evading rules about dress or hair; Bosworth, 1996; Crewe, 2007; Ross, 2009-2010). Similarly, there is also no single motivating factor that fuels non-compliance. Prisoners’ reasons for resistance may be personal, political, and/or practical (Bosworth & Carrabine, 2001; Brockman, 1999; Cesaroni & Alvi, 2010; Coontz, 1983; Van Tongeren & Klebe, 2010) and are shaped by both the institution and the world around it (Allspach, 2010; Bosworth, 2010; Jiang & Fisher-Giorlando, 2002). The myriad ways in which prisoner resistance is enacted and produced invites research on this topic. In particular, there is growing interest about mundane, hidden forms of resistance that tend to fall under the radar (Crewe, 2007; Ugelvik, 2011). Examination of the “everyday routine interactions” that “contribute to the maintenance or disruption of the status quo” can build understanding about the ways in which prisoners actively navigate and construct their prison experience (Bosworth & Carrabine, 2001, pp. 505, 513).
The examination of everyday prison foodways, or activities related to the acquisition, preparation, distribution, and consumption of food, has proven to be a particularly fruitful approach to building knowledge about inmate resistance. Prison foodways research has demonstrated how incarcerated people use food to push back against institutional control of their identities and physical selves (Godderis, 2006; Rowe, 2011; Smith, 2002; Smoyer, 2014; Thomas, 2008; Ugelvik, 2011; Valentine & Longstaff, 1998). For example, Ugelvik (2011) described how non-Norwegian men held in an Oslo prison used seasonings to transform Norwegian fare into dishes typical to their own cultures, resisting prison structures that rendered these identities invisible. The prisoners also used illicit foodways to restore their dignity by constructing themselves as courageous and smart (Ugelvik, 2011). Similarly, analyses of foodways in men’s prison in the United States (Thomas, 2008), Britain (Valentine & Longstaff, 1998), and Canada (Godderis, 2006) have suggested that inmates use food to re-affirm ethnic identities, connect to life outside the prison, and out-smart the institution. Inmates used “cognitive tricks” (Godderis, 2006) and “food fantasies” (Valentine & Longstaff, 1998) to diminish food cravings imposed by institutional food policy. Resistance was also enacted by verbally complaining to staff about food (Godderis, 2006). Research about women’s experiences with food in English prisons has found that these prisoners engaged in efforts to limit their food consumption to re-assert control over their bodies (Smith, 2002; Rowe, 2011). English female prisoners also reported open attacks on the institution via cafeteria foodways, including banging trays and throwing food at staff (Smith, 2002).
This article builds on existing knowledge about resistance and prison foodways by analyzing women’s narratives about food in a U.S. prison. Focusing on U.S. women’s prison foodways, this work addresses two gaps in the literature. First, women’s incarceration and female prisoner resistance in particular have historically been understudied (Bosworth, 1996; Zaitzow & Thomas, 2003). Issues of resistance in women’s prison are perceived as less pressing because female prisoners are less violent than male prisoners (Craig, 2004). This has left questions about the ways in which women react to and negotiate with prison power largely unanswered (Bosworth, 1996). Second, prison foodways research has been conducted primarily outside the United States, hiding this quotidian aspect of incarcerated life in the world’s largest correctional system from the public eye. Applying systematic data collection and analysis, this project offers robust qualitative findings about U.S. female prison life that can be used by policymakers, program managers, and clinicians to better understand prison foodways, resistance, and the incarceration experience.
Method
To build knowledge about the lived experience of female incarceration, interviews were conducted with 30 formerly incarcerated women regarding their experiences with prison food and foodways. All of the participants had been imprisoned at the same women’s correctional facility in the Northeast region of the United States. Participants were recruited using convenience sampling from a community-based program that provides post-incarceration housing and re-entry services in a small urban area. In accordance with the approved Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol, written informed consent was administered to all respondents; participants were compensated US$30 for their time and expenses. The sample was racially diverse: 13 self-identified as Black, 12 as White, and 5 as Latina. The average age of participants was 37.8 years (SD = 10.5). Seven of the women had been incarcerated 1 time, 12 had been incarcerated 2 or 3 times, and 11 had served from 5 to 32 sentences. For 21 of the women (70%), the controlling offense for their most recent incarceration was a drug-related charge.
The interviews lasted approximately 90 minutes and were digitally recorded. The data collection instrument was a 14-item semi-structured interview that asked about food and eating experiences in different parts of the prison (e.g., intake, cafeteria, housing units), favorite and least favorite foods, and prison cooking practices. Each primary question had a series of probes that asked how, where, and with whom food was acquired, prepared, and shared. There were no questions that asked directly about resistance to or compliance with penal power. Instead, these topics were explored indirectly by gathering stories about the everyday matters through which imprisonment is contested (Bosworth & Carrabine, 2001). The semi-structured nature of these interviews meant that each interview evolved differently—the order of questions was determined by participant responses, and each participant raised unsolicited comments and information. More extroverted participants told stories with rich detail and explication about their motivation and intentions, while less verbal participants recounted a simpler version of events with few embellishments. Taken together, their narratives describe a constellation of activities and behaviors that took place in the institution around food.
Using the transcription process as an opportunity to adjust subsequent interviews and to incorporate and explore preliminary findings (Bird, 2005), qualitative data analysis software (NVivo) was employed to manage and organize the data using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The study’s thematic analysis included the following steps: familiarization with the data (listening, reading and memo writing, matrix development), generating initial codes, applying, editing, and consolidating codes, and organizing and reviewing themes to generate findings (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002).
Results
The correctional facility’s rules prohibited any interaction with food beyond eating what one was served in the cafeteria, consuming self-purchased commissary items, and simple forms of cooking with hot water. However, in spite of staff efforts to control inmate foodways, participants frequently broke the institution’s food-related rules. Participants suggested that they had to break the rules to avoid hunger, but rule-breaking was not simply about satiating physical hunger. As the following analysis will illustrate, participants constructed their disobedience as a form of resistance, an exercise of power and autonomy that challenged the authority of the institution and its agents. Participants broke food rules to push back against the system that confined them and the sense of powerlessness that it produced. They also used illicit foodways to connect with other inmates and construct community. Participants described trying to secure extra cafeteria portions, hoarding food, smuggling and stealing food, and cooking and eating in the cells to resist prison power and gain some control over their lives by managing what, how, when, and with whom they ate.
Portion Resistance
Women resisted institutional authority while serving and being served cafeteria meals by breaking rules about portion size and serving protocols. These stories about women disobeying rules to secure more cafeteria food may seem incongruent with their complaints about this food. Participants consistently described the cafeteria food as unappetizing. Nevertheless, women made efforts to obtain as much of this undesirable food as possible. This apparent contradiction might be explained in two ways, which are not mutually exclusive. One, given the inmates’ restricted access to food, all prison food, however disgusting, was valued. Women experienced hunger and were desperate for anything that might satiate this pain. Two, their actions illustrate a desire to resist, to demonstrate to themselves, their peers, and to me that they were capable of gaming the system and regaining some semblance of personal control. In other words, food rules were broken to enact a resistance of institutional power, not just to get more food.
Portion resistance by cafeteria workers
Women who worked as cafeteria servers reported breaking rules about portion size to provide more food to their peers. Inmate hunger and the perception that the strict serving rules were nonsensical justified their actions: They don’t feed you enough, and we would throw pots of food away at the end of everybody being served. My thing was, if they throw that much away, we can give them more. They had little scoops and they [food service supervisors] would say, “Level that scoop off.” When I worked the [cafeteria serving] line I would be like, “Yo, y’all put more on them scoops.” (P3)
In this passage, P3 shifted control from the rule-makers to herself as she recognized her own power (“We can give them more”). She rationalized the illicit behavior by explaining that there was always extra food and defining the act as benefiting another inmate. The ownership (“My thing was . . . ”) and authority (“ya’ll put more on them scoops”) that she took in making the decision also suggested that she experienced a boost in self-efficacy and power from this act of resistance. If there was an exchange of goods or benefits between P3 and the women to whom she served full scoops, she did not report them. In her telling of the events, the satisfaction of having bucked the system was her principal reward for this rule-breaking. No longer just a cog in the cafeteria wheel, she was thinking and acting independently. Similarly, P20, who also worked in the kitchen, described breaking the cafeteria portion rules: Sometimes if I know I cooked enough, I would give them extra . . . One poor girl she was all drawed up, like she was just coming out of detox or something, and she was so hungry. My supervisor yelled at me because I gave her an extra piece of cake, and a lot of oatmeal and stuff. I said, “Look it. I was once there.” I was hungry before. But they make it an issue to where, “We don’t have enough,” and then they have all this extra food left over and then we have to throw it in the garbage. (P20)
P20 was undeterred by the supervisor’s verbal reprimand, she knew she had “cooked enough” and refused to send food to the garbage when inmates were hungry. In giving “extra,” she endorsed her own knowledge about the amount of food available and the inmate’s hunger and aligned herself with the hungry inmate, telling her supervisor, “I was once there.”
Portion resistance by tier workers
Like their peers in the cafeteria, women employed in the housing units, known as “tier workers,” talked about breaking prison rules to make more cafeteria food available to other inmates and resist institutional power. Tier workers’ responsibilities included distributing food trays to inmates without cafeteria privileges. In the Segregation Unit where P27 worked, inmates were confined to their cells 22 hours a day and did not go to the cafeteria to eat. Her duties as a tier worker included delivering meal trays to inmates through a small window in their cell doors. In the following passage, P27 described how inmates in Segregation would drop their trays, inside their cells, to get a second tray. Like P3 and P20, she noted that there was consistently extra food that was thrown away and suggested that the “little bit portions” did not satiate inmates’ hunger. She described her efforts to get extra trays to these women: There was some people who would drop their tray. Make it seem like they dropped their tray so they could get another tray, so they can get more food . . . It’s crazy because they give you such little bit portions in the trays and they got so much food after, after they’re done serving everyone and they’ll throw everything away. So, it’s like—you’d rather throw it away then . . . They [staff] used to be like, “How many’s up there [in the Seg Unit]?” And I used to be like, “Oh, we got this many.” And when the CO [correctional officer] used to turn, I used to slide people extra trays. You see someone, “Yo, you got me on the extra tray?” I be like, “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.” (P27)
Even under the extreme constraints and surveillance of the Segregation Unit where these women lived and worked, P27 and the women she was serving were able to extricate power from their ostensibly powerless positions by staging food disruptions and bringing in extra food trays. Women tricked the guards, allowing food to drop to the floor so that they would be given another tray, and then eating food from both servings. Working with the staff to deliver meals, P27 feigned cooperation, responding to them in the first person plural: “We got this many.” Her actual alliance, however, was with the other inmates to whom she would “slide” extra trays. Like P20, her narratives asserted that she was helping others to get more food, but she was also cultivating her own feelings of power and self-efficacy by tricking the staff and taking sole responsibility—and credit—for the allocation of extra trays: “I’ll see what I can do.”
In the transitional units, where women lived until their service needs and security risks were assessed, women also did not eat in the cafeteria. At mealtimes, they were released from their cells to pick up trays from tier workers in a common area and then returned to their cells to eat. Policy allowed for one tray per inmate, but women reported asking tier workers for more than one meal: “There’s been times where I’ve been like, ‘Lemme get two trays’ . . . I’m gonna try to get a couple of trays. Especially if it’s something I like” (P24). Participants also described how inmates in the transitional units figured out how to go through the line twice: They’ll come out and they’ll get in the line—they’ll be first—and they’ll come out with their hair all a mess, run back up, put their tray in [their cell] and then get back in the line with their hair pulled up. ’Cause we’re all in uniform, we all have the same uniform and the COs—they’re at the desk, looking, but they’re really not. . . . They go and get another tray, they’re that hungry. (P8)
In this scenario, women used the dehumanization of incarceration to their own advantage. That the staff could not recognize the women individually allowed them to pass twice through the line and secure additional food by simply changing their hairstyles, subverting institutional power by transforming the prison’s oppression into a benefit.
Correctional officers’ (COs) reaction to portion resistance
COs’ knowledge of, or reaction to, these food-related maneuvers was not necessary to construct an act as resisting institutional authority. However, direct confrontation with the personification of institutional authority, the COs, certainly highlighted the act’s resistance. P25 recalled when an inmate challenged staff by trying to take taking additional servings right in front of them: I seen a girl, start—like at breakfast—the girl wanted a bigger piece of cake . . . The girl leaned over and tried to grab the piece of cake and then the CO’s, like, “Put that cake back! Da, da, da, da. Get out!” or whatever. And she had to throw her tray out, she couldn’t even eat. He kicked her out. So, I don’t know how that works. Now the girl can’t eat for the day ’cause she wanted a bigger piece of cake. (P25)
In this story, the CO’s actions were decisive and swift: The woman had to throw out her entire tray and leave the cafeteria immediately. P25’s comments about the incident reflected her disagreement with the punishment. She implied the CO had over-reacted to the cake grab and did not think it was fair that the “girl can’t eat for the day.” So although the inmate’s resistance was unsuccessful in that she was unable to bypass the CO power to get more cake, her actions still managed to, perhaps inadvertently, destabilize CO authority by raising questions about staff legitimacy in the minds of her peer, P25.
Hoarding, Smuggling, and Stealing
In addition to resisting rules about cafeteria meal portions, women frequently broke rules about food possession by hoarding food, stealing food, and moving food between prison spaces. Just as in portion resistance, these actions resisted institutional power that sought to control when, where, and what inmates ate. They were also largely collaborative schemes in which women worked together to ameliorate the community’s foodways.
Hoarding
As has been described, women ate in their cells in the confined units (i.e., medical, segregation, transitional). When mealtime was over, tier workers would collect the meal trays, including any uneaten food. Although it was against prison policy to keep cafeteria food in the cells after mealtime, participants reported that it was common for inmates to retain uneaten food to avoid being hungry at night: “In medical, you can hoard food . . . Soup. Or potato salad, you want for later . . . Peaches” (P8). By hoarding food, women could have food on hand and resisted the institution’s attempts to completely control their eating schedules. Although women expressed concern about the possibility that COs would search their cells and discipline them for this stored food, none of participants had been disciplined for this behavior. Still, even without much enforcement, hoarding was prohibited and the constant threat of discipline could allow these acts to be understood as form of resistance.
Smuggling and stealing
Participants reported smuggling food across the institution. Some women living in the transitional units tried to take food with them on day trips to the courthouse for judicial proceedings (“court runs”). Once women were convicted (if being held on pre-trial detention), processed, and assessed, they were assigned to long-term housing units in a part of the prison referred to as general population. In these units, they ate all meals in the cafeteria and were allowed to seek employment and participate in activities within the prison. In this environment, smuggling, or the illicit movement of food from one part of the prison to another, and stealing from the institution were common. Women smuggled food from the cafeteria to the cells, and vice versa. Participants stole food from their kitchen jobs and brought it back to the housing units. They transported food to each other, moving products from one tier or housing unit to another. They traded and shared food at Bible Study and school. Smuggling was prohibited and actively discouraged by the COs. Inmates caught smuggling could be issued a “ticket” and brought before the Disciplinary Board. Nevertheless, nearly all of the women reported smuggling food, or at least trying to do so.
Smuggling to court runs
Women being held in pre-trial detention were transported to local courthouses to appear before the judge to have their cases adjudicated. These trips, referred to as “court runs,” were associated with hunger as the only food served during these long days was a cold, baloney sandwich at lunchtime. Women were not permitted to bring snacks on court runs; full-body searches were conducted before their departure from the facility to ensure they were not carrying any contraband, including food. P3 reported negotiating these searches and successfully bringing food with her on court runs: I actually only took candy when I went on my court runs . . . I would actually sneak it. You know, everybody, “You’re not gonna make it past them women [the COs].” I’d always make it past . . . I would actually take and put the fruit in my socks . . . They would always be like, “You’re not supposed to do that,” but I would tell them, I said, “I don’t eat nothing. Are you actually going to take the chance of me eating nothing for them seventeen hours?” . . . I said, “You don’t know me. I will fall out. I will get the Academy Award on y’all bus. Don’t try me.” (P3)
P3 understood the prison prohibition against taking food on court runs as an opportunity to enact resistance. She discussed her plans with other inmates beforehand, and their warnings that she would never “make it past them” only strengthened her resolve. She was open about her intentions with the COs, challenging them to enforce the rule by threatening them with a real or theatrical collapse. This food resistance was indeed a performance (Godderis, 2006), complete with audience (other inmates) and supporting characters (the COs) that allowed P3 to demonstrate her disregard for prison rules and authority.
Smuggling to the cafeteria
The most common smuggling pathway reported by women was bringing food from, and to a lesser extent, into, the cafeteria. Food smuggled into the cafeteria was generally seasoning (e.g., barbeque sauce, salt and pepper, butter) that was not available in the cafeteria: “On French Toast day? If you’ve got butter, you’re bringing it” (P8). Seasonings were stolen and smuggled to the tier by kitchen workers and/or made in the cells with items sold on commissary: We would bring our own commissary to the chow hall and dress stuff up, too. Like bring our creamer, and our regular coffee—mix it in with that and make it a little bit better. We’d bring other stuff, like on chicken day, on Sunday, we would make hot sauce ball, bring ’em with us to put on our chicken. (P25)
In this narrative, P25 assigns ownership of the food products to herself and her peers: “our own commissary . . . our creamer . . . our regular coffee.” She downplays the policies prohibiting all food movement and asserts her own power by saying she would “bring” these items to the commissary, not smuggle them. In her mind, there was little wrong with bringing her seasonings to meals. And the COs seemed to agree: None of the participants reported being disciplined for bringing food into the cafeteria. With this smuggling activity, women resisted both the prison rules and a prison experience that would include only bland, unseasoned meals (Valentine & Longstaff, 1998). Bringing “our own commissary to the chow hall” allowed women to “dress stuff up” to match their own personal and cultural palates. In a system that depersonalizes and dehumanizes the inmates’ lived experience, seasoning food can be understood as a form of resistance (Ugelvik, 2011).
Smuggling from the cafeteria
Food smuggled out of the cafeteria was used to cook and prepare snacks in the housing units, often in combination with commissary items. In contrast to the lack of concern about food coming into the cafeteria, smuggling food from the cafeteria was aggressively discouraged by prison staff. COs were stationed at the cafeteria exit and closely monitored the women as they filed out. The threat of search and punishment discouraged some participants from smuggling food from the cafeteria. Four participants (P7, P23, P26, and P10) explicitly stated that they never even attempted to remove food from the cafeteria. However, most women were undeterred. Participants reported removing food from the cafeteria, or at least trying to, on a regular basis. Some women would plan their smuggling efforts in advance and, depending on what was being served, bring either empty trash bags and/or paper towels to wrap and transport the food. Others would simply tuck the items into their clothes: You know how you got a chance to eat your food? Or to get full? You steal it. You take your sandwich and you wrap it up and you stuff it in your bra, or your pants or wherever you’re gonna put it, your pocket, whatever, and you eat your other stuff. You eat what you can eat there, but, you know, like you had to steal! (P14)
P14’s narrative makes clear that stealing cafeteria food was not solely about combating hunger. Mealtimes were short—about 10 min according to participants—still this could have been enough time to eat quickly. However, instead of dedicating this time to eating, P14 suggested that inmates should use the time to pack “stuff” up—“to steal!” If one really wants “to get full,” the food must be removed from the sanctioned space and eaten on one’s own terms. Taking food from the cafeteria offered the opportunity for women not just to eat at their own pace but also to resist prison power and control, transforming an institutionally sanctioned meal into an act of defiance that was truly satisfying. Wrapped and stuffed into a bra, to be eaten back on the tier (as P14 describes), an authorized meal became contraband, an instrument of resistance and defiance.
The use of clothing, bras and underwear in particular, to smuggle food from the cafeteria was common and created a particularly gendered form of resistance: A lot of girls would put them [hard boiled eggs] in their bras cause they [COs] are not allowed to pat your boobs down . . . they can’t actually touch your bra so a lot of girls would put the eggs in their actual bras, so it would look like their boobs and that’s how they would get away with it and they would do the same thing with the apples. They would say to their Bunkie “Give me your apple” so they could make it even and then when they got back to their cells and give her back her apple. Which is fine, ’cause it [apple] has skin. (P5)
With this smuggling tactic, women took advantage of safeguards against sexual abuse provided by the State. Their bras and breasts were transformed from fragile objects in need of protection into devices of resistance: “It [food] would look like their boobs and that’s how they would get away with it.” P14 also used regulations that protected sexualized body parts, in this case her crotch, to smuggle food (a bag of spaghetti) from the cafeteria: “I just was like, ‘No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ . . . It’s no way in the world he’s getting the spaghetti out my pants!” Turning the tables on the power dynamic for which the prison search policies were created, which constructed the inmate as victim and the CO as perpetrator (Annas, 2012; Nader & Pasdach, 2010), women used their knowledge of inmate rights to resist these roles.
Stealing from the kitchen
Another form of foodways resistance was the removal of seasonings, condiments, and other items from the kitchen to the housing units by kitchen workers. Women reported that it was relatively easy to remove food from the kitchen, because inmate workers were not closely supervised and COs did not consistently search them when they left the kitchen. Women reported stealing butter (P1, P3), cheese (P29), seasonings (P4, P18, P24), sugar (P12, P18, P29), and meat (P8, P14). When women were caught stealing, they were fired and issued tickets, but if they wanted to return to work, they would eventually be able to do so because the need for kitchen workers was so high.
Participants who spoke of stealing from the kitchen constructed this behavior as a way to resist the prison’s inedible food and low wages. For example, when I asked P29 whether she was deterred by enforcement efforts, she replied, “No, I still would try. ’Cause you don’t want to eat what they make.” Knowing that she might get caught and punished, she “still would try” because the prospect of having no control over her food choices, eating “what they make” seemed to be a grimmer option. P3 conceptualized stealing as a way to re-negotiate her wages: We’re in prison, believe me, anyone who works in the kitchen, they get access to a lot of things and that’s how they negotiate. They steal it cause as far as I’m concerned you don’t—You get paid 75 cent a day. I used to tell them, I said, “Whatever I steal it’s compensation for what you all paying me. I don’t even want to hear it.” (P3)
P3 pushed back against the low salary by taking ownership over any resources, including food, which she was able to acquire, “that’s how they negotiate.” By stealing, she regulated her “compensation,” extracting a wage that was more acceptable to her and thus resisting the prison’s attempts to devalue her work and self.
Cell Eating and Cooking
Eating and cooking in the housing units ran the gamut from snacking on potato chips or candy bars straight from the wrapper, to preparing simple dishes such as tuna or lunch meats on saltines and bread, to elaborate group cooking projects that involved multiple ingredients and participants. Like the other illicit food behaviors that have been described here, most forms of cell cooking challenged prison authority because the activities were prohibited. Furthermore, by (re)creating their food, women resisted prison efforts to dictate what they could and could not eat. Cell cooking was an activity of re-invention and re-purposing that allowed inmates to resist institutional power by assigning new meanings to the prison food and commissary items.
Cell eating
Inmates who had the social or financial resources to secure commissary food and/or smuggled and stolen items were able to reduce their reliance on cafeteria food, avoid particularly inedible meals, and construct a sense of food autonomy. Having enough commissary supplies on hand meant that inmates could choose not to go to the cafeteria: “When I had commissary, I would pick and choose what days I was gonna go to the dining hall” (P5). Although skipping a meal to stay back and eat commissary was not prohibited, the choice that P5 described can be understood as a form of resistance because it allowed her to assert her independence from or refusal to participate in the prison meal system. Women expressed their disapproval of a meal by electing to stay back: “If they know they feeding slop, it’s a lot of people won’t come” (P23). This resistance required having enough food on hand to skip the cafeteria meal without going hungry, making inexpensive yet filling commissary items, such as noodles, very popular: “The Oodles and Noodles [sic] is always the favorite because like sometimes you didn’t wanna eat the food and you don’t. You just make the Oodles and Noodles [sic]” (P4). With a small bag of dried noodles, P4 was positioned to resist the meals she did not like. This ability to exert some control over what and when she ate enabled her to re-negotiate the conditions of her incarceration.
Cell cooking
Participants told elaborate stories about their group cooking endeavors: mixing and often heating multiple ingredients to create “off-menu,” personalized items.
Oodles of Noodles, those little soups. We would crush ’em all up, put ’em in a bag, put squeeze cheese, put the soup packet, spice. Put like rice, white rice in there. Chopped up, hot summer sausage, throw that in there, or whatever else. Put the hot water, smash it all up, go like that. Then, we’d flatten it out and make, put a poppa. Potato chips, crush ’em up with hot water, put like spice in there, squeeze cheese and meat, flatten that out. Get it crispy, put it on top of the noodles and everything. Drizzle like hot sauce, or whatever kind of dressing you want to put on. We eat stuff like that. Yeah. Crazy. (P25)
In addition to the resistance of avoiding the cafeteria by “eating in,” these group activities embodied two other forms of resistance: rule-breaking and re-purposing.
Rule-breaking
The only institutionally sanctioned form of cell cooking was to mix hot water and dried noodles or rice in the small plastic bowls sold on commissary. When women collaborated with each other and pooled resources to cook large dishes in trash bags and pillow cases and/or used hair dryers and radiators for heat, this was a violation of prison policy. Generally, these rules were not enforced, and women could cook unperturbed, but more egregious cases could catch the COs’ attention. For example, P14 described an incident where she got a ticket and her blow dryer was confiscated for cooking and resisting CO orders: The lieutenant [correctional officer] came to take my blow dryer ’cause I was cooking a bagel with it . . . He [another CO] be up in my room talking shit. I was like, “I can’t hear you.” And that’s all I said. I wasn’t like, “I can’t hear you, I’m cooking.” . . . So he knew what I was doing so he came downstairs, and he was like, “What are you cooking? Give it to me.” I was like, “Hell, no! I ain’t giving it to you.” ’Cause I had some contraband roast beef with a poppa on a bagel, I was like, “Hell, no! I ain’t giving you what I’m cooking.” . . . So, he called the lieutenant and the lieutenant came and took my blow dryer. I was mad! I did get a ticket, too . . . I only bought that hair dryer to eat, that’s it! Not for my hair. That was my oven! (P14)
That she told the CO she could not hear him because she was cooking, making no effort to hide her illicit behavior, suggests either that rules against this behavior were not regularly enforced (giving her no reason to try to hide it) and/or a blatant disregard for his authority. Either way, she clearly constructed this story as an illustration of her resistance: “Hell no! I ain’t giving it to you.” Even if cell cooking did not generally lead to the type of staff confrontation that P14 recalled, participants did describe this activity as prohibited, and their frequent engagement in these activities reflected a refusal to comply, a resistance.
Re-purposing
When women cooked in their cells and housing units, they often re-invented ingredients by cooking and eating items in ways that differed from ordinary consumption or use. Cooking also involved re-purposing prison supplies, turning cleaning supplies, linens, and small electronics into cooking gear. For example, refrigeration was produced by placing food in sealed trash bags in the cold water of the toilet basin. Hair dryers were used to cook and toast food. When P14 constructed the hair dryer as something else (“That was my oven”), she was resisting conventional meanings and re-purposing the item to meet her own needs. Similarly, women described how potato chips were crushed and then hot water poured into the bag to create a “poppa,” a popular pizza-like dish with a potato chip crust. This creation was a process of collaborative re-purposing, working with others to smash, squeeze, and flatten the ingredients sold in the commissary to create something new (a poppa). These efforts resisted institutional efforts to erase the women’s individuality and prescribe what they could eat by creating personalized dishes from the standard fare.
Similarly, P9 described how she would line board games with plastic trash bags and make a “Fatty Girl” Christmas cake from the snacks sold on commissary: I’d make Fatty Girl. Like Christmas, we made a big . . . we put in for the whole tier, everybody ate on the tier . . . Out of honey buns . . . Swiss Rolls, Chocolate, everything . . . . Peanut butter . . . [We’d make it on a] Card board [game] box . . . You line it with plastic bags. (P9)
Practically, everything in P9’s recipe has been re-purposed: the game boxes, the trash bags, and the individual snack cakes. Instead of playing the board games, lining the trash cans with the bags, and eating the snack cakes from the wrappers, the group resisted falling into these prison-authorized scenarios and invented a new name and new uses and modes of consumption for these items. In this story of holiday baking, the women also resisted the unremarkable repetition of daily prison life, using food to recognize and celebrate Christmas. P8 also described a Christmas cooking project: Take bread from the chow hall, bring it home, and then you cut it up, like into little pieces, and then, put it in a bag and then with the blow dryer, you blow it and . . . then you add cinnamon to it . . . And with a little butter and . . . We made cinnamon balls and then they strung ’em, with a needle and thread, there was no needle, but with thread and made little things for a Christmas tree, they had, like around the tree, but they were made of food. (P8)
It is not uncommon for people to string food (e.g., popcorn, berries) into Christmas tree decorations. However, this project that used the prison cafeteria bread, stolen kitchen cinnamon and butter, a blow dryer, and thread, shows creative re-purposing, creating something unexpected and unscripted from the ordinary, and allowing the women to work together to resist institutional efforts to deny their humanity.
Discussion
This analysis of prison foodways offers a glimpse of the lives of incarcerated women in the United States and the many ways that these inmates use food to resist prison control and authority. Their narratives echo the stories in the existing prison foodways literature about resistance and raise further issues and themes for consideration.
First, these women’s narratives posit another iteration of prison foodways for the resistance continuum. Participants primarily spoke not of overt collective action (i.e., hunger strike, food fights) nor of hidden, individual acts of solitary food resistance, but of collective, mundane acts of resistance that were performed by and for the inmate community. The portion resistance by cafeteria and tier workers, for example, increased access to food for the served, not the server. Although there were surely tangible and intangible benefits for the server, this resistance was a team effort in which women were breaking rules with and for each other. Similarly, although hoarding behavior benefited the hoarder, smuggling and stealing were collaborative acts of resistance in which the spoils were shared. The Fatty Girl cake was not made or consumed alone, it was a group project that pooled resources from across the tier and served many: “We put in for the whole tier, everybody ate on the tier” (P9). In a system designed to have each woman eat from her own cafeteria tray and prepare a single cup of soup in her cell, participants were continually trading, moving, and combining food resources with their peers. In these ways, the participants’ prison foodways created community and resisted institutional efforts to separate inmates and discourage group activities.
The second point that arises from these data is grounded in the fact that all human beings across time and place use food to construct identity, culture, and relationships (Counihan, 1999; Wood, 1995). These narratives illustrate that prisoners are no exception to this human truth. Women used prison foodways to create a sense of autonomy, identity, community, and normalcy in the prison environment. Although these foodways benefits may have been partially derived from the opportunity for resistance that these illicit actions presented, gaining some control over what, when, and how they ate was also satisfying. Regardless of whether or not it is permitted, homemade hot sauce simply makes prison chicken taste better. In other words, although some women may have engaged in illicit foodways to prove their capacity to game the system, many women resisted institutional food policy in an effort to satiate the human desire to nourish oneself. By this logic, a significant portion of foodways resistance would disappear if prison policy were modified to permit greater inmate participation in their own foodways, for example, allowing inmates to serve themselves in the cafeteria, providing a snack during the extended time period between dinner (4:30 p.m.) and breakfast (5:30 a.m.), and permitting the use of commissary-bought condiments in the cafeteria. Permitting inmates to store some food items in the housing units and granting access to a microwave and other basic cooking tools might also alleviate some of the food-related tension described in these narratives. A more ambitious step would be to explore the implementation of self-cook kitchens in U.S. prisons. These facilities, which allow inmates to cook together in small groups, function in correctional facilities throughout Canada and Europe (Godderis, 2006; Earle & Phillips, 2012; Ugelvik, 2011).
The option of rejecting such reforms and staying with the current system seems unpalatable, at best. After all, resistance, even at a benign, barely disruptive level, creates an atmosphere of distrust and subterfuge, which may weaken institutional functions and escalate into more disruptive performances that are detrimental to prison order and counterproductive to offender rehabilitation (Bosworth, 1999; Bosworth & Carrabine, 2001; Crewe, 2007). Furthermore, the sporadic enforcement of foodways policy that participants described may destabilize staff–inmate relationships by making boundaries and expectations unclear (Crewe, 2007). Although enforcement could be strengthened to try to more consistently punish these infractions, eradication of all illicit foodways behavior is nearly impossible. As P1 pointed out, “They don’t know what we eat.” The monitoring of micro activities in the porous environment of a prison is a Sisyphean task. Given that the elimination of all inmate resistance is untenable, exploring structural changes that might at least diminish some women’s motivation to resist prison rule seems worthwhile.
In sum, this analysis of foodways in a U.S. women’s prison offers food for thought about the prison experience and how food-related resistance within correctional facilities might be curbed. Foodways offer inmates daily opportunities to resist or comply with prison authority. Women reported regularly resisting institutional power to collaborate with peers and control their own foodways. Altering prison policy to permit these behaviors could reduce the extent to which prisoners engage in stealing, smuggling, sneaking, and other forms of resistance. Furthermore, shifting greater control over prison foodways to the inmates might buoy rehabilitative efforts by fostering the development of life skills and non-criminogenic characteristics including budgeting, food preparation, sharing, collaborating, and personal responsibility.
Footnotes
Author’s Note
The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the City University of New York, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, the National Institute of Mental Health, or the National Institutes of Health.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The project described was supported by the City University of New York Graduate Center’s Doctoral Student Research Grant program and Award Numbers T32MH020031 and P30MH062294 from the National Institute of Mental Health.