Prison lunch
Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 11:04PM 
Today I had lunch in a prison.
It was just as vile as you might imagine.
A choice of meat pie, pasty or samosa with rice or potatoes (at least I think that is what they were, I can’t be sure). There was not a fresh vegetable or piece of fruit in sight. There was a "vegetable casserole" but I am not counting that since the only discernable components were peas and corn; ergo, it looked more like something that one’s body might expel than something one should be consuming. (Perhaps not so) sadly, I do not have a picture I can show you as we were not allowed to take cameras into the prison.
You would be forgiven for wondering what on earth I was doing eating lunch in a prison. The Howard League for Penal Reform is a charity which campaigns for less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison. They advocate that in most cases prison is ineffective in rehabilitating offenders and inevitably leads to reoffending, suggesting community sentences as an alternative for people on short-term sentences or for those that have committed non-violent offences. They also provide a legal advice service for children and young people in custody.
Today’s lunch was a fundraising event for the Howard League aimed at giving people who would not usually have any contact with prisoners or prisons a perspective on what it is like to be inside. A chance to see that prisoners are often just average individuals, more often than not from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds, whose unfortunate circumstances have led them to turn to crime.
In order to give the guests a realistic perspective, visitors were not treated to a special lunch. They ate prison food. Apparently, the budget for an adult male's food for an entire day is £2.20. This provides them with 2000 calories a day, 550 less than recommended for a healthy adult male. The budget is even smaller for a child in custody, despite evidence that they require higher levels of nutrition.
I had intended to write an entirely different post tonight, but when I got home all I could think about was vegetables:
Hardly worth blogging a recipe for, but I thought the reason behind my unusually green dinner worth sharing.
Vix
- Macaroni pie
- Cowboy pie
- Falafel nuggets
- Kebab pizza
- Grated cheese (as a main meal option)
- Tomato and chilli sausage tortilla (the only halal option)
- BBQ veggie sausage tortilla (the only veggie option)
- Corned beef pasty baguette (yes, that is correct, the pasty is the sandwich filling)
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Reader Comments (7)
Vix you inspired me to google an article I read in the Independent about an on going research study into the harmful effects of poor nutrition. Here's a direct quote from the Independent on 29 Jan 2008 :
"Some of Britain's most challenging young prisoners are to be given food supplements in a study aimed at curbing violent behaviour.Scientists from Oxford University say the effect of nutrition on behaviour has been underestimated. They say increases in consumption of "junk" food over the past 50 years have contributed to a rise in violence.
The university will lead the £1.4m study in which 1,000 males aged 16 to 21 from three young offenders' institutions in England and Scotland will be randomly allocated either the vitamin-and-mineral supplements or a placebo, and followed over 12 months.
In a pilot study of 231 prisoners by the same researchers, published in 2002, violent incidents while in custody were cut by a more than a third among those given the supplements. Overall, offences recorded by the prison authorities fell by a quarter."
I bet the study will have similar findings to the pilot study. It makes perfect sense that if the brain is starved of essential nutrients it wont function properly - ergo - bad or violent behaviour.
Thanks Ma, that is a really interesting article. I'm keen to see the outcome next year. For those who are interested, the original article is here.
Hi Victoria, I never, ever post crap comments like "I really appreciate your blog/post" but in this case, I think I will. It is important that people know that those who probably had pretty poor nutrition to start with (I make an exception for e.g. Jeffrey Archer) are pretty much being starved by our prison system, and children in custody get grated cheese! as a meal! On a blinking potato maybe, with some salad or fruit on the side... I think successive governments have become harsher and harsher, what happened to showing people a different way to live, what happened to fixing broken people and broken lives, ie the entire concept of rehabilitation? Seems it is now to be a nasty and all about punishment. This is our society, we either accept it or fix it, but we cannot fix it if we dont know about it, so great post.
Hi Skyler, thank you for making an exception and writing such an encouraging comment. I am only sorry that I do not write on important social issues more often. I think the Coalition government is beginning to head in the right direction, for e.g. the movement towards reducing the prison population, the plans to implement real work in prison, the use of more community sentences as an alternative to short sentences, but it is problematic that austerity measures are at the core of the changes being made. This is unlikely to bode well for nutrition in prisons!
Thanks for reminding me of this. Will pass on to our policy guys at GLA. Weird how things that seem such common sense, like' not eating sufficiently well will impact negatively on a young person's behaviour' is still able to shock.
You are right that it should be obvious. I think part of the problem is that there isn't much sympathy for young prisoners. Thanks for passing it on to the policy people at Greater London Authority, important to spread the message on issues such as this.
Hi Robert, I'm glad you thought so :) Thanks for the comment.