Appetite for destruction: Food-related experiences of incarcerated children and young people

Introduction

Foodways analysis has proven to be a useful framework for understanding lived experience of incarceration. Recent research has suggested that food is both appreciated and resented, that the quality is rarely as good as it could or should be and that it is thoroughly imbricated in the dynamics of punishment, care and calibrated neglect that characterise adult prison regimes (Earle & Phillips, 2012; Godderis, 2006; Smoyer and Lopes, 2017; Valentine & Longstaff, 1998). Issues of gender, race and class run consistently though the analyses, but are suitably accompanied by critical inquiry about carceral spaces, technology and power. On a more specific level, the theme of positive, non-punishing food experiences (as ‘re-appropriate[d] selfhood for inmates’ (Camplin, 2017, p. 57)) is often accompanied by a strengthening of pathways and opportunities for building better lives through care and generativity (de Graaf & Kilty, 2016; Greenwood, 2009; Smith, 2002), preservation of valued relationships and gender roles (Comfort, 2002, 2003; Smoyer, 2015; Stearns, 2019), engagement with culture and ethnicity (Godderis, 2006; Ugelvik, 2011; Valentine & Longstaff, 1999) and a move towards narratives of wellness and recovery (Smoyer, 2014). As shall become apparent, my work with juvenile detainees in South Australia resonates with this concern about how institutional food arrangements impact children and young people with diverse characteristics. To date, though, the theoretical and practical implications of how children and young people – generally those aged 10–17 years – experience food in custodial settings have been overlooked in penological research.

Meanwhile, the concept of food as a lens for understanding children and young people’s everyday experience of material deprivation and social exclusion has only recently been given serious attention within academic scholarship (see Cairns, 2018; Fram et al., 2011; Goulart Cardoso et al., 2019; Jennings et al. 2020; Morrow et al., 2017; Wills & O’Connell, 2018; Wills et al., 2018). Most studies have found that low-income children adopt a variety of strategies to cope with policies and practices that would oppress and degrade them (Cairns, 2018; Fram et al., 2011; Goulart Cardoso et al., 2019; Wills & O’Connell, 2018; Wills et al., 2018). Children feel that, because they are poor, they are served low-quality food, raising complaints about taste, appearance and smell, and cite a lack of love and commitment towards meal preparation (Goulart Cardoso et al. 2019). The main criticism of this literature is the limited concern with how food poverty is experienced by young people in the global South and USA. This point is made by Wills and O’Connell (2018) where they argue that ‘not enough is known about how children and young people negotiate food and eating in contexts of poverty and inequality or the difference that social contexts and social positionings make’ (p. 169). Much, of course, has been written about the effects of food insecurity and the impact of insufficient nutrients and calorie intake on children’s nutritional, physical, and mental health. In the latter instance, culturally appropriate and youth-led health promotion interventions are ‘significantly associated with increased knowledge, dietary self-efficacy, and dietary improvements’ (Saksvig et al. 2005, p. 2397). In terms of food insecurity and obesity prevention, Jennings and colleagues (2020) note that ‘access to healthy food, control of food quality, ancestral food practices, gardening activities (exercise), and strengthening their families through meal sharing and community feasts’ (p. 902) can be expected to provide a lasting advantage for Indigenous children in terms who face multiple risk factors.

In what follows, I draw on selected narratives of detainees in a juvenile justice centre in order to build a picture of the subjective meanings they attribute to the food they are eating. What aspects of the prison food do young people perceive as particularly objectionable? Do they connect the problem of food to the other problems of being in custody, such as the denial of basic human rights or reduced physical and mental well-being? More specifically, I aim to explicate the striking level of disadvantage and disability amongst this sample and to suggest that juvenile justice systems invest themselves more deeply in some of the issues portrayed as more or less inevitable in nature. By considering how incarcerated children and young people experience food against the Model Charter of Rights for Children and Young People Detained in Training Centres, then, this article is intended both to address the lack of knowledge about juvenile justice foodways and provide insight into what juvenile institutions might need to change in order to realise therapeutic and rehabilitative aims. Prior to examining young people’s food-related experiences, however, it is important to offer some contextual information about the Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Centre (KTYJC) in South Australia from which the narratives are drawn.

Context of juvenile justice in South Australia

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), of which 196 countries are signatories, reflects commitment toward the development and nurture of young people who infringe against the criminal law and supporting them in their rehabilitation (United Nations, 1989). It is, of course, well established that those who reside in juvenile justice facilities are drawn largely from the most disadvantaged and vulnerable families, neighbourhoods and communities. Likely to have experienced a history of entrenched poverty, family violence, neglect, abuse, child protection involvement, mental health disorders and/or cognitive disabilities, drug and alcohol (mis)use, low levels of educational attainment and homelessness, detained young people often struggle to achieve independence with the most basic activities of daily living. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth have experienced intergenerational trauma as a result of colonisation, including displacement from the country, loss of culture, institutionalisation and abuse and culturally and linguistically diverse detainees may have experienced war and conflict, displacements, and loss of family networks. Such a circumstance ‘points to the deleterious effects of childhood trauma, and, specifically, to the likelihood of criminality for those unable to connect to the right kinds of support’ (Halsey, 2018, p. 19). As such, the most effective means of addressing offending behaviour is considered to be a therapeutic approach that responds not only to the needs of traumatised children but ‘includes measures to support equality and justice, to combat poverty and to reduce hopelessness among young people’ (United Nations World Programme of Action for Youth, 2010, p. 36). In Australia, the Model Charter of Rights for Children and Young People Detained in Training Centres (Australian Children’s Commissioners and Guardians, 2014) details the rights of children and young people while they are held in detention. Drawn from the UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty (the ‘Havana Rules’) (1990); UN Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the ‘Beijing Rules’) (1985); and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), fundamental rights for young people include:

To have a say in decisions about your rehabilitation and other issues that affect you;

On average, and on any given day, around 36 juveniles (generally aged 10 to 17 years) reside in secure care in South Australia (AIHW, 2021). KTYJC (formerly called the Adelaide Youth Training Centre) is a 60-bed facility and South Australia’s only youth justice centre. At the time of writing, 80% of the residents were male, 20% were female and 58% of all young people identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. The mean resident age was 15.7 years (DHS, 2020A). As part of the Kurlana Tapa Disability Screening Project, the Department of Human Services (DHS, 2020B) gives the following overview of some resident demographics ¹ :

38% are under the Guardianship of the Chief Executive (i.e. in State care);

Current study and approach to the field:

Data for this article stem from my employment with a government sector organization appointed under the Youth Justice Administration Act 2016 (SA) (see s11) to promote and protect the rights of children and young people detained in training centres. As part of the Training Centre Visitor Unit (TCVU), an independent oversight team, I conducted qualitative interviews and ethnography about prison food with incarcerated youth to build further knowledge about how objectives like rehabilitation and reintegration, growth and development are being pursued at the Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Centre. Focus groups during the school holidays provided an additional source of data. Narrative interviews and focus groups were chosen as age-appropriate data collection tools which did not disadvantage children and youth with poor literacy skills. Conversations with these young people – their struggles and their views related to food (accessibility, culture, diet/exercise and belief in the possible self) – form the basis of the current piece.

In the context of undertaking fieldwork with incarcerated children, Ayete-Nyampong (2015) addresses several important and inter-related ethical issues that confront the ethnographic researcher, who also at the same time retains a practitioner status. Acknowledging ‘the epistemological shifts and power dynamics’ associated with the ‘ensuing double role’ (Ayete-Nyampong, 2015, p. 307), the present research centred on the right of each young person to ‘decide if they wish[ed] to get involved, to what degree and how’ (Laws & Mann, 2004, p. 10) but honed in specifically on allowing residents to identify their most important concerns related to food and what they desired to receive from KTYJC. To this extent, an inductive approach – guided by emergent empirical data rather than testing a hypothesis – is recognised to ‘contribute to more egalitarian dynamics and a feeling of ownership and empowerment’ (Galvez, 2018, p. 19) for children and adolescents. In this approach, as argued by Galvez (2018), young people ‘are understood to be experts in their own lives and of their own embodied experiences’ (p. 27). While the truism holds that participants ‘could deliberately conceal information, conduct their own ‘impression management’ and engage in selective gatekeeping’ (Ayete-Nyampong, 2015, p. 307), ‘research that makes the most of children’s abilities, and treats them with respect, can provide children with opportunities that bring significant improvements in their own wellbeing’ (Laws and Mann, 2004, p. 10). In this regard, food at KTYJC quickly emerged as a universal topic that young people could connect with and act upon. Giving residents ownership of their problems, allowing them to define and express their views and emotions, and demonstrating the value of speaking up, empowered them to self-advocate for better food through unit-based feedback forms/complaints box and Youth Advisory Council meetings.

From 01 January 2021 to 30 August 2021, I conducted 21 scheduled visits to KTYJC on a weeknight between the hours of 4 pm and 9 pm (i.e. after school) with a specific focus on food and nutrition. Every young person was sighted and spoken with unless they were asleep, attending a professional/family visit or off site (i.e. in hospital). This amounted to 71 young people visited across the 7-month period. In total, 32 residents spoke to me about the food at KTYJC during visits. Aligned with what Ayete-Nyampong (2015) terms ‘conversational interviews’ (p. 313), young people were more willing to ‘give’ during interviews whilst we engaged together in various activities like playing videogames or shooting hoops in the gym. I was also present during the dinner service and have sat and eaten food with residents during which time they freely commented on the foodservice they were receiving. Specific conversations or remarks were recorded verbatim in a notebook and typed up later as case notes. As a means for understanding constraints surrounding the care, treatment or control of residents, observations and/or remarks made by staff at KTYJC during visits are included in the current piece. During this work, I was also granted access to observe KTYJC’s kitchen during the preparation of meals and given information about the centre menus, the current tuckshop (i.e. commissary) list, and a tuckshop purchase summary for the January–April 2021 quarter.

During the Term 1, 2021 school holidays, I conducted a further 2 days of consultations lasting between 25–40 min (individually and in focus groups depending on resident preference) about the TCVU programme. Participation was voluntary, with 18 young people electing to take part (8 of whom were not included in the original visit data). Young people were informed that the primary objective of the consultation process was to seek the views of KTYJC residents to inform the design of the TCVU’s advocacy and visiting functions. However, each of the consultations rapidly moved to in-depth discussions about food at KTYJC. Across visits and consultations, I had contact with a total of 40 young people about their food-related experiences. The majority of these residents (45%) identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, 32.5% identified as neither Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and 22.5% identified as culturally and linguistically diverse (predominantly African but also West Asian). Care was taken to ensure that residents understood and consented to their anonymised voices appearing in published – as well as general advocacy – work in relation to this project on food/nutrition at KTYJC. On a small handful of occasions, young people provided information which was likely to increase the risk they could be identified, namely by KTYJC staff (e.g. in relation to their religious beliefs or medical status). I met with these individuals on a further occasion to explore the potential consequences of including this material. Each young person appeared to appreciate the risk and, cognisant of their repeated and longstanding complaints to KTYJC management about food, were adamant that their experience be recounted here.

The article is divided into four key themes arising from a grounded analysis of the case notes (see Dey, 1999, 2007 and Charmaz, 2014). These themes include; connecting food to a damaged past, connecting food to culture, connecting food to proper punishment and connecting food to the possible self.

Appetite for destruction: Connecting food to a damaged past

Food in a metaphorical sense has significance in explaining not only why crimes are committed, but also the injustice of punishing people for events or circumstances beyond their control. Detainees overwhelmingly indicated that their original involvement in crime derived from emotional and trauma-oriented issues which, despite a suite of offender rehabilitation programmes, remained largely unaddressed. This is consistent with recent work revealing that ‘between 62% and 98% of incarcerated young men in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States report at least one lifetime experience of trauma prior to incarceration’ (Vaswani, Cesaroni & Maycock, 2021, p. 355). Examples varied within the current KTYJC cohort, but many involved the deprivation of food. Divested of the social or economic capital that typically comes from ‘family’ (in whatever form), Bailey resigned himself to either a life of involvement with the criminal justice system or a life living ‘rough’ on the margins of society: ‘I’m homeless and I don’t have any money. I’m actually here because I’m sick of being on the street’. The wretchedness of his circumstances was on full display when Bailey described his ‘fantasy’ meal of hot pancakes with syrup for breakfast. Meanwhile, he described the day-today reality of his situation in the following terms:

I eat 10 packets of instant noodles every day. I steal them from Coles [supermarket], yeah, the staff all hate me there. But the staff at On the Run [petrol station] know me and give me boiling water to make them up. (Bailey)

Kai’s young life was similarly filled with anguish and turmoil. Conversations with him demonstrated that while Kai always had a (state sanctioned) roof over his head, he was homeless in the sense that he had no particular place to call home, with placements in each location – 11 in one year alone – quickly breaking down for a variety of reasons. As he reflected:

I’m here because I never got fed on the outside. I was starved at one of my residential care placements. The first time I came in [to KTYJC] you could feed me dirt and I would appreciate it. At [i.e. names government housing placement] they’d say, ‘If you think you’re such a big bad criminal, go feed yourself’ and they would withhold my food. I punched a hole in the wall just so the other kids could feed me; the girl in the next room would make two sandwiches, she would eat one and then pass the other one through to me. (Kai)

Having regard to the duration over which young people had struggled with a wide range of problematic behaviours, ‘this kind of deep despair led to the curious ‘embrace’ of the correctional system as the means for short-circuiting cycles of harm’ (Halsey & Deegan, 2015, p. 10). Most of the young people acknowledged that, in the community, they stood little chance of living a drug-free lifestyle – let alone of eating three square meals per day:

The bottom line in all of this was the idea that KTYJC was literally the device for disadvantaged young people to access services, detox, sleep, gain weight and – most tragically – experience care. In the excerpts below I asked young people to account for periods of relative stability and academic achievement whilst in lock-up:

It’s a bit sad but probably ‘cause I’ve got a routine here, yeah. Yeah, it’s fucked. The workers here actually care about some of us and … I got people telling me to actually get out of bed so I can get an education and, yeah. … I’ll be honest, you know, I don’t actually hate it here and that’s the sad part about it ‘cause this is a youth justice centre, we’re supposed to be learning not to come back but I keep coming back. (Bobby)

Against this backdrop, it is unsurprising that food hoarding, emotional eating, overeating and binge eating symptoms assume a prominent place in the youth justice centre. In fact, issues related to problematic eating and food-related behaviour map neatly onto dimensions of childhood abuse and neglect, with children subject to out-of-home care most at-risk (Cox et al., 2015). As Jennings and colleagues (2020) put it, ‘unstable housing introduces untoward stress and food insecurity risks that may introduce a famine-hunger paradigm in which children eat excessively when able’ (p. 900). Only one resident reported receiving a loss of privilege, or ‘phase’ level, in relation to food hoarding. At the same time, ‘even without much enforcement, hoarding was prohibited and the constant threat of discipline could allow these acts to be understood as a form of resistance’ (Smoyer, 2016, p. 198). Complicating matters, psychotropic medication use and high levels of stress in juvenile detention were seen to precipitate, reinforce and/or motivate the types of eating disturbances commonly experienced by traumatised individuals:

My medication gets me real hungry. (Andy)

Without doubt, the most extreme example of problematic eating behaviour at KTYJC was the intentional (and repeated) ingestion of foreign objects (batteries, pens, flaking paint, paper clips, etc.) by certain residents, as illustrated by this irreverent exchange at the dinner table:

Indeed, there have been several, documented situations where young people in KTYJC found themselves admitted to or detained in hospital on account of eating non-food items, which is recognised as a chronic problem in prison populations (Evans et al., 2015; Guinan et al. 2019). This raises, in central fashion, the question of the adequacy of mental health services in custodial settings and, more squarely, what custody is or could be used for.

Born this way: Connecting food to culture

Supporting young people in youth justice centres to maintain and develop their connections to culture and community remains a high priority on most policy and political agendas. The merits of cultural engagement as a protective barrier to involvement in crime are well known, being significantly associated with enhanced mental health and a buffer to distress caused by discrimination (Shepherd et al., 2018). More specifically, numerous studies have noted that way in which ‘the desire to consume cultural foods, a habit usually developed in childhood, is one of the most powerful and potent forms of cultural identity’ (Godderis, 2006, p. 262). In this light, it is no exaggeration to say that ‘the power of food to dramatize the distance from home is most keenly felt by prisoners from ethnic and religious minorities’ (Valentine & Longstaff, 1999, p. 135). For Aboriginal, African and Asian background children and young people at KTYJC, striking the right balance between allowing all residents – from a variety of age groups and backgrounds – to choose and consume a healthy, nourishing meal and providing others with the opportunity to assert their national/ethnic identities remained a key issue:

The issue of ‘whiteness’ is important because it goes to the forms of power and oppression playing ongoing significant roles in detainee’s lives. Roast lamb, shepherd’s pie, Lancashire hotpot and an assortment of crumbed dishes (chicken strips, chicken schnitzels, fish fingers, etc.) feature prominently on the KTYJC menu in line with the Anglo-Celtic cultural identity embedded in prison kitchens elsewhere. Lee and Alex considered their relationship with their respective families to be of a different quality from that of many of their peers in the justice centre environment. Their frustration and resentment towards the official centre food – and those who serve it – was manifest:

These kids don’t know any different, they live on a diet of pies and sausage rolls on the outside anyway. Staff say, ‘We treat the boys equally. You have to eat what they eat.’ But I’m born differently. We don’t eat like Australians and I don’t want to eat these kinds of foods. The staff approach is, ‘Who gives a fuck? You either eat it or you don’t’. (Lee)

What was particularly apparent from respondent’s narratives is that special diets, required because of cultural, religious or health reasons, were an undertaking largely lost on the justice centre – that you can’t just provide a pork-free sausage and expect a Muslim person to feel engaged and supported in their cultural identity: ‘These people think pork-free means white-free’ (Max). Lee expressed this in the strongest terms, telling of how he woke at 5 am (in observance of Ramadan) to receive the same lamb roast that he refused to eat the night before: ‘I was fasting. But I stopped it. If you give me shit food after I’ve been fasting all day, I’ll go mad. When I get out, I’ll do fasting. Start over’ (Lee). In a system that manages less than 40 detainees on any day, young people questioned why the centre couldn’t accommodate the food or food-related activities they knew would strengthen their involvement in positive networks. Ezra and Dane capture, respectively, this circumstance:

They should bring in kangaroo meat for us Aboriginal boys. We play digeridoos and shit in here; they should let us cook kangaroo tails in the ashes. That’s our traditional food … [and] we should be able to make a fire and cook. Making a fire is good for us black fellas. (Dane)

Here, young people can be seen to tap into the generative dimensions of sharing food and eating together. To this extent, culturally based ‘food groups’ where members come together to buy, prepare and consume an ethnic meal have been seen to make a difference in terms of life within and beyond custody for prisoners in Canada (Godderis, 2006), Norway (Ugelvik, 2011), England (Earle & Phillips, 2012) and Denmark (Minke, 2014). Adopting an appropriately calibrated realism about the training centre setting, most young people could see the merits of this approach:

Cooking two or three days would help maintain stuff for us outside. (Emerson)

Another brick in the wall: Connecting food to proper punishment

A related issue to emerge was that, for many children and young people detained in South Australia, the food was seen as ‘part of the punitive armory of the prison experience’ (Earle & Phillips, 2012, p. 144). To be sure, many – indeed the majority – described the monotony of having to eat the same fare, day in, day out, and rated the food as bad or very bad:

On occasion, young people seized an opportunity to take a stand about the unappetising nature of the food. Casey, one of the youngest boys, tried to gain control of the dinner service by demanding TCVU visitors inspect, and then score, the meal as he (and several peers) ate white bread smothered in tomato sauce as a form of protest:

Describing a tendency for mealtimes in prison environments to be ‘tense occasions where emotions such as resentment, anger and frustration often find expression’, Catrin Smith (2002, p. 205) similarly witnessed prisoners leaving the table, shouting, banging trays and spitting food out or throwing it at staff. Such outbursts, as she rightly observes, ‘are not just about the food itself (which to the outside observer seemed quite good), but rather are about power and powerlessness’. Invoking their own parenting experiences, youth workers in the present study wearily role-modelled and cajoled, offering sanguine accounts of the food with comments like, ‘It’s not THAT bad. See, I’m eating it’ and ‘Well, we can’t always have things we like now, can we?’ While the disruption was mild and short-lived by carceral standards, ‘there was often an edge to [young people’s] actions, and it was never clear how the situation would develop or end’ (Bengtsson, 2021, p. 215). Indeed, there were several instances where food was the catalyst for a major incident or a near miss:

Tuna Mornay? Don’t get me started. It looks like slop, man. Did you hear about what happened in the girl’s unit over tuna mornay? It caused a stand-off, bro.’ (Taylor)

In addition to the variety of dishes served, specific complaints about food included the timing of the meal service and concerns about the quantity and quality of food following the delay between preparation and serving. As described in previous research, meals are often prepared around midday and stored in ‘hotboxes’ which are then delivered to the units for portioning and service by youth workers.

They cook food and then put it away for hours and it heats up and dries up like a potato. (Lindsay)

The sublimation of detainees capacity to eat as and when they are hungry is recognised as a way for correctional regimes to be ‘inscribed upon the bodies of the inmates’ (Valentine & Longstaff, 1999, p. 137). The proneness of this cohort to impulsive and self-harming behaviour means that electrical items such as kettles and sandwich presses, along with seasonings and condiments are prohibited in resident bedrooms. Young people are also prevented from ‘saving’ hot meals in bedrooms for ‘later’ as a means to discourage food hoarding and/or foodborne germs and illnesses. Consequently, opportunities to reheat or repurpose food to taste, as seen in studies of adult prisoners are limited, if not impossible. Here, and again, white bread becomes the means through which problems associated with the ‘institutionally convenient’ timing (an unappealing nature) of the meal service within KTYJC are mitigated:

We have dinner so early, like 5 or 6, and we get hungry around 10pm and they can’t open the doors again [to give us anything]. So we make sandwiches, like pack food just before we get locked down in our rooms, to get us through the night. Jam and butter sandwiches; I make 4 sandwiches, like 8 slices of bread. (Alex)

Smoyer and Lopes (2017) have summed up this situation writing that ‘poorly designed, sloppy food systems’ leave prisoners ‘feeling uncared for, ignored, frustrated, and humiliated’ (p. 240). With regard to a wide range of food-related issues, Aboriginal residents Dane, Nicky and Emerson shared that view, representing their experiences of hunger at KTYJC as an extension of the apathy and indifference they contend with ‘out there’ in the community. As they reflected during visits:

They never ask us what food we want. They just drop it here and walk off. (Emerson)

A second point to draw out derives from the gradual realization that, perhaps, prisoners and secure care residents fundamentally deserve what they get. Under such circumstances, a number of young people ‘acknowledged that they were in prison and therefore they argued that they could not expect to be served ‘good food’ (Parsons, 2019, p. 5). Responding to another resident’s intense complaints about food, one young man, Ashley, was overhead to say, ‘Calm down. You’re in prison bro’. In the following excerpts, unenticing food enters the biography of the young person as an entirely reasonable response to the various types of pain and damage they had caused in the community:

Food was heaven at the start [of my admissions to KTYJC] because I hadn’t been fed but now … it’s just sad. Maybe they think bad children deserve this shit. (Kai)

Imagine: Connecting food to the possible self

Food exists as a paradoxical phenomenon – as power(lessness), (dis)comfort, (in)security, health and potentially health debilitating. Adolescents overwhelmingly indicated that their flagging self-esteem and self-worth derived from a combination of unfavourable weight-gain and limited opportunities for physical activity in custody. Indeed, nutrition and exercise are recognised to influence each other in complex and innumerable ways. More to the point, several studies employing adolescent samples have suggested that healthy eating accompanied by physical activity is not only effective in preventing excess weight gain, but also improved sleep, mood and brain-related functions and outcomes. Of course, childhood and adolescent obesity is an issue of great significance in public health globally and is implicated in many chronic diseases such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The psychosocial burden of obesity is also well established, with numerous studies indicating that obese children and young people experience significant issues related to depression, emotional and behavioural disorders, self-esteem, quality of life and body image, which can continue into adulthood (Keough et al., 2017). While there are no comprehensive data sets on rates of weight gain in juvenile detention, one recent study showed that mean weight gain for a total population (n = 65) was 17.8 pounds (or 8 kg) over 71 days, which was gained most rapidly in the first few weeks of incarceration (Keough et al., 2017). Meanwhile, a previous study conducted by Robinson et al., (2006) found that, upon admission to a long-term juvenile correctional facility, 12% of male youths were obese and 26% were overweight. After 3 months, 66% were obese or overweight.

Concerns were raised with the TCVU that a number of young people either gain significant weight in the centre after admission or enter overweight and gain more weight. As part of the Metropolitan Youth Health Service policy, each detainee receives a standard screening and health assessment when they enter juvenile detention. Of relevance here, height, weight and BMI is collected upon admission with long-term detainees (i.e. those serving a minimum 6-month detention order) provided with follow-up assessments at regular intervals. It was reported by staff that some young people at KTYJC weigh well over 100kg and that some had put on as much as 30kg during an admission, with at least four young people named. This was confirmed by residents themselves who described emotional ‘comfort’eating, disrupted sleep, impulsive behaviours and the tendency to overeat energy-dense, discretionary foods.

Putting aside the issue of whether it is likely or even possible to gain 11 kilograms in 14 days, the pre-eminent trope (or catchcry) of young people was that meals at KTYJC were intentionally high in calories and refined carbohydrates to remedy the effects of drug abuse over a typically short remand. Or, as one young person bluntly exclaimed: ‘They shouldn’t give us so much carbs. Fuck! We’re not all on crack in this place!’ (Jordan). Indeed, for some young people, the fear of ‘blowing up’ in size was so intense they reported skipping meals to stave off unwanted size:

But, as it turned out, drug-induced emaciation was not the assumption at the heart of the training centre food system: ‘Our menu is catered for adolescent kids. They do a lot of exercise, so it is carb loaded’ (KTYJC staff member). This is, to be sure, a contentious claim. From a detainee’s viewpoint, large portions of the day were spent confined to small areas and not undertaking regular incidental exercise like running for a bus or riding a bike to school. Rather, daily physical activity was centred around 60–90 min of recreation time (gym, basketball court and swimming pool) every evening, which is undertaken by each Unit in turn. However, according to adolescents at KTYJC, a range of issues routinely undermined efforts to get the requisite amount, or intensity, of physical activity to maintain good health and fitness, and for healthy weight during growth. A selection of young people’s comments here include:

It ends up being half an hour of gym for our daily exercise. In that time you only just get started – just the pre-work out – then we get kicked out because the little boys [unit] want to shoot hoops. (Alex)

What I take from all of this is that inadequate food and recreation opportunities contribute to the poor mental health and development of children in KTYJC. Here, and returning again to the meals provided in secure care, the Australian Dietary Guidelines for Children and Adults (2019) was hotly contested terrain. More specifically, detainees complained that it was impossible for them to consume the recommended consumption of five portions of fruit and vegetables per day: ‘We don’t get enough fruits and vegetables. [Just] huge plates of noodles with nothing much in it’ (Morgan). While fresh fruit was offered constantly during the day and at night it was primarily limited to apples and pears. In terms of instituting meaningful change, young people echoed the suggestions of Edwards and colleagues (2009) namely, ‘that other seasonal, perhaps local fruit might be sourced; thereby increasing variety and tempting consumption’ (p.165).

It’s always apples and pear. They’ll bring like 10 apples and maybe a few mandarins. (Jamie)

Comments from young people also support Godderis’ (2006) assertion that ‘the inability to direct how their food was cooked (e.g. baking versus deep-frying) reflected their inability to make beneficial consumptive choices and thus, they could not be in full control of their health’ (p. 258). And so it was with Jamie and Dallas:

We like working out and that – we train – so we try to eat as healthy as we can. (Dallas)

This is exactly where the issue of commissary or ‘tuckshop’ comes to the fore. While facilitating self-care in various ways, tuck shop functions as one of the few ways secure care residents can shape their own pathway whilst in lock-up through the purchase of supplementary food and toiletry items. While maintaining their right to access snacks that are high in energy but low in nutrients – like chocolate and crisps – adolescents noted the limited capacity for better choices within the current offerings:

More equivocal was how KTYJC staff viewed the continuum of ‘junk’ as against ‘healthy’ options available on the $10 weekly buy list, ‘Of course kids go for lollies etcetera, but we try to encourage them to make good choices’ (KTYJC staff member). Undoubtedly, there is good evidence to suggest that adolescence is a sensitive period for high-fat and high-sugar diet exposure due to a transitional period in neurodevelopment and lifestyle practices. In this scenario, the physical act of eating ‘junk’ food elicits a pleasure response from the reward system of the brain. However, I also join with Hemmingsson (2018) in arguing that stress, insecurity, low self-esteem, and poor mental health ‘create a more or less perfect foil for calorie-dense junk food self-medication and subtle addiction, to alleviate uncomfortable psychological and emotional states’ (p. 204). Clearly it is not uncommon for parents or caregivers to succumb to children’s pestering for specific food and drinks, particularly in the face of any tantrums. However, discretionary foods also may be misused as a reward or behavioural management tool which is of limited value in accounting for the types of changes young people have identified. Of course, as De Graaf and Kilty (2016) remind, ‘using food as a bribe or incentive to encourage [prisoners] to perform [particular] tasks or to behave passively illustrates the politics of food in prison and how food connects … activities and particular actors within the prison setting’ (p. 41). The following excerpts graphically illustrate how the seemingly harmless act of giving bags of candy to motivate young people might morph into something far more damaging:

Today’s rewards box needs to be refilled [laughs] because I’ve been getting so many rewards. It has popcorn, lollies, chips, soft drinks. (Andy)

Discussion and concluding remarks

The excerpts above offer a small insight into the food-related experiences of children and young people detained in South Australia’s Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Centre. Part of my argument has been that shared socioeconomic adversity, disability and emotional turmoil are critical to understanding both how such exposures can promote weight gain and how food-related behaviours of some children and young people are perpetuated over time. At the same time, detainees’ experience of powerlessness in interactions around food extends to other contexts. Comparing these adolescent’s lived experiences of food with the Charter of Rights for Children and Young People Detained in Training Centres highlights problems with the Charter’s potential implementation but also that food is a punitive aspect of the custodial experience, particularly in so far as it fails to reflect cultural expectations or preferences. Indeed, I found the right to consume enough good (culturally appropriate) food; to participate in activities and programs that promote rehabilitation; to learn useful skills for work; and to get the requisite amount of exercise, to be overwhelmingly rejected by children and young people’s framings of food-related matters at KTYJC.

By engaging young people in formal and informal dialogue about their collective experiences of food at KTYJC, prominent themes canvassed by detainees are that they want to be listened to; to be recognised as individual, good people; to be supported to build skills for the next stage of their lives and to be given more choices for programs, services and education. It is clear, of course, that many of these findings align with previous research on adult prison foodways. On the other hand, there is also little doubt that today’s juvenile justice system seeks to distinguish itself from the adult criminal justice system in several important ways. First and foremost, the juvenile justice centre is a structured environment that seeks to put into effect the objects of the UNCRC, which recognises that ‘childhood is separate from adulthood … [and] is a special, protected time, in which children must be allowed to grow, learn, play, develop and flourish with dignity’ (Unicef, 2021). In fact, Parliament, in South Australia at least, has expressly provided that when sentencing a youth, that is a person who is under the age of 18 at the relevant time, the primary purpose of sentencing is to seek such care, correction and development of that youth into a responsible and useful member of the community and to have regard to the proper realisation of that youth’s potential (Young Offenders Act 1993 (SA) s3(1)). This sits in stark contrast to such a case where the offender is an adult and the primary factors to be considered at sentence are aspects of community safety, retribution and deterrence to other people who may be tempted to commit similar crimes (Sentencing Act 2017(SA)).

Of course, it would be wrong to say that prisons and juvenile training centres could, or should, accommodate every individual food demand. But, and equally, some analytical weight attaches to the fact that juvenile detainees are generally economically, geographically, linguistically and culturally isolated with few, if any, dependable supports. Recall that this cohort are also well below their age-based peers in terms of their ability to complete self-care tasks, organise themselves, plan, problem solve, and look after themselves and others. Additionally, the ability of youth justice residents to function in social situations (interpersonal relationships, play/leisure and coping skills) is also well below their age-based peers. Disengaged from education, many young people do not see how traditional schooling is relevant to their lives. At the same time, ‘their time of incarceration often represents their only significant contact with a healthcare provider outside of an emergency setting’ (Golzari, Hunt & Anoshirivani, 2006, p. 776). In this context, it would be reasonable to assume that, as primary care givers and/or key support persons, juvenile justice centres have a responsibility to listen, educate, counsel and promote targeted behaviours which straddle the justice centre and beyond. While I have focussed in this paper on the food and well-being practices adopted in KTYJC, it is obvious that there is a wider responsibility for what occurs in juvenile justice institutions. As such, there would seem to be great scope for enacting a legally binding framework to ensure ‘accountability and clarity of entitlements as well as in defining institutional mandates and coordination across sectors’ (Cruz, 2020, p.vii).

Failure to seriously wrestle with the food-related desires of young offenders might be explained as a sign of an enduring correctional mindset and an impulse to avoid all risk. There is also a possibility that the age-range of this carceral population is deployed by department staff to justify cost-cutting through the provision of a ‘carb loaded’ menu. Whatever the precise reason, it bespeaks a careless indifference and a missed opportunity to promote life skills and the practice of pro-social ways of living. Indeed, cooking interventions; planning, budgeting, shopping, food preparation, cooking a meal from scratch, and eating together around a table, are used in a variety of therapeutic and rehabilitative settings. Food and food-related activities can be used, for example, to enhance cultural awareness and belonging, peer and social development, literacy and numeracy, problem-solving, sensory development, and also to improve small muscle control, fine motor skills, and hand/eye coordination. By attempting to get children and young people safely involved in the cooking process, they also learn more about their bodies and what they eat more generally, leading to more positive dietary habits in adulthood. With this in mind, I offer the following, modestly pitched strategies to address the powerlessness, inequality and exclusion experienced by detainees and, more importantly, for enhancing a sense of hope about successfully returning to community life. First, to engage a qualified nutritionist/dietician to meaningfully assess the quality, quantity and variety of the meals, snacks and tuckshop/commissary on a regular basis. It is envisaged that this would lead to recommendations for improvements. Second, to develop a youth engagement approach in relation to obtaining young people’s views and wishes in relation to the tuckshop menu with a view to increasing healthier options. Third, to provide regular opportunities for young people to plan, budget, shop, cook and share a meal from scratch to enhance independent living skills and maintain connections to culture. Fourth, and finally, I would argue that intentional and meaningful educational food programmes and self-cook groups, supported by trained staff, would give the young prisoner an increased chance to reform and be motivated in the direction of lawful behaviour. Ostensibly, it is not just about teaching young people these skills, but also giving them a structured environment where they can implement them. This harks back to a comment made by Emerson, a KTYJC resident, earlier in the manuscript, that, ‘cooking two or three days [per week] would help maintain stuff for us outside’. This additional effort would, at a very basic but important level, ensure the rights of particularly vulnerable children and young people are met and their development and well-being are supported.