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Correctional Dining
Prison Food in the Hudson Valley
By Lee Bernstein • Photography by Jennifer May
Bob McCloskey, the food service administrator at Fishkill Correctional Facility, pulls an 18-inch-long bread-shape, brown mass of wheat, vegetables and various mystery ingredients wrapped in plastic from the back shelf of the kitchen’s walk-in cooler. This is “the loaf ” (more officially known as “nutraloaf,” and far more vile than the name would let on), one of the most extreme forms of punishment at Fishkill. It is only given to prisoners who have had a disciplinary hearing for repeated infractions. Because of its impact on the digestive system, those going “on the loaf ” must receive medical clearance, according to Fedele Fiore, the prison’s assistant deputy superintendent.
Fishkill operates on a three-tier disciplinary system. A tier-one punishment might involve a corrections officer assigning an extra detail to an inmate for a minor infraction. A tier-two punishment involves a disciplinary hearing after more serious transgressions and can involve the loss of privileges like care packages, visits, phone calls or, for more serious or repeat offenders, assignment to “keeplock,” Fishkill’s solitary disciplinary housing unit, for up to 30 days. Tier-three punishments are for more serious transgressions of prison regulations: drug use, physical assault or repeated tier-two infractions. In some cases, third-tier punishments can involve a transfer to Fishkill’s maximum-security S-Block or additional criminal charges leading to an extended stay. Or the punishment could just simply be going “on the loaf.”
On the day I am there, this concoction is breakfast, lunch and dinner for three of Fishkill’s 1,700 inmates. The loaf comes accompanied by water and a side of boiled cabbage to aid digestion.The loaf is so bad thatMichigan prisoners brought a federal suit against the state in 1988 on grounds that their state’s loaf violated the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. In 2003, a Muslim inmate in New York filed a suit on grounds that it is not halal (food made in accordance with Islamic law). Neither suit was successful, but using food as a form of punishment remains a significant source of grievances and lawsuits throughout this country’s penal system.
Captive Consumers
The idea of prison food, a sustenance intended not to please or nourish but simply to sustain, raises difficult and somewhat profound questions about the social function of food in society. In addition to fueling our bodies as we move through the day, mealtimes are an opportunity to cement bonds of kinship and friendship. What we eat and how we eat reflect our values and priorities while demonstrating the care or indifference about our bodies and communities. In Fishkill, the message is clear: inmates should be fed as cheaply as possible, within minimally acceptable standards of nutrition and calories observed. The food at Fishkill is bland, beige and repetitive, with menus rotating every eight weeks. A registered dietician creates a new statewide menu rotation every two years. These menus underscore that daily life is more than monotonous for the 60,000 inmates in the custody of the New York State Department of Corrections (DOCS) serving an average sentence of over nine years. The vast majority—96 percent—of these prisoners are men. More than half of them are over 35 years old and three-fourths of them are African-American and/or Hispanic. If they are representative of African-American and Latino men in the rest of the country, they suffer from diabetes and high blood pressure at higher rates than whites or Asian-Americans. This demographic monotony is repeated without much variation throughout the state’s penal system, and if you are transferred from, say, Fishkill in the Hudson Valley to Attica in western New York, the food will be remarkably the same. In addition to controlling costs, this allows DOCS to closely monitor nutritional value when determining minimally acceptable diets.
In recent years, for example, the state lowered trans fats and sodium content levels. If an inmate eats all the food the state provides, he or she will consume between 3,100 and 3,200 calories per day, one serving of fruit juice at breakfast, one piece of fruit at dinner, a vegetable and protein at lunch and another of each at dinner.
“It’s not bread and water, but you get what you pay for,” McCloskey admits to me on my recent visit to Fishkill’s kitchens and mess hall. The New York State Department of Correctional Services estimates that it spends about $2.65 per day to feed each of the 60,000 inmates in the system. The state is able to feed people at 88 cents per meal through a combination of centralization and low labor costs. The food is prepared and frozen at the state-owned and operated Oneida Food Production Center (FPC), a 45,000-square-foot facility located in the geographic center of New York State. The Oneida kitchen houses 400-gallon steam kettles, tanks capable of cooking one-ton of food at a time, and equally mammoth juice and vegetable processors. One hundred and forty inmates from the Oneida Correctional Facility earning wages that range from 38 cents to 65 cents per hour prepare the food, then package and freeze it in large plastic bags. The bags of chow mein, beef cacciatore, kidney bean creole or any of the other premade meals are then shipped in refrigerated trailers to all 70 state and 12 participating county facilities. Fishkill receives shipments every Wednesday for the following week. About 40 percent of the prison’s food comes from Oneida. Canned and dried foods come from foodservice giant Sysco Corporation, and McCloskey direct orders a negligible amount of fresh fruits and vegetables for the facility.
Sixty inmates and four or five civilian cooks staff each meal, working in the kind of large, industrial kitchen you might find in a hospital, military or college dining facility. There are, of course, some notable differences. Because a cooking utensil or the folded lid of a can might be used as a weapon, all cooking utensils are kept under the careful watch of a corrections officer, and inmates must show all can lids to an officer or civilian staff member before throwing them away. In order to reduce pilferage, all refrigerators, freezers and pantries are locked. The staff operates on a fairly strict hierarchy, with newcomers to the kitchen starting as porters or in the dish room before moving up to become pot washers, prep cooks, bakers and servers. McCloskey keeps his eye out for detail-oriented workers and sends them to the special diets room, preparing meals for Fishkill’s Regional Medical Unit (RMU) and Unit for the Cognitively Impaired (UCI). These units provide long-term care for inmates with Alzheimer’s, dementia, AIDS and other chronic conditions that can require special diets.
The quality of the food is closely monitored by the inmates and, in some cases, the federal courts. Under provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), prisons are required to provide religiously appropriate meals for observant prisoners. Fishkill provides kosher meals to 40 Rabbi-approved Jewish inmates. During Ramadan, halal meals are provided to break the fast each evening. And each day’s menu includes a vegetarian alternative for Muslim and Rastafarian inmates, but this option is often an afterthought. On hot dog day, for example, the vegetarian option amounts to a few slices of American cheese. Although access to religiously defined diets are guaranteed, prison officials sometimes view claims for special diets with suspicion. The kosher meals at Fishkill cost about 10 times the price of the regular food, so when prisoners who have requested and qualified for kosher meals skip them more than three times, they are removed from the list.
Privatizing Grub
New York has achieved significant cost control without fully privatizing its prison food services, but most other states have turned prison food services over to corporate providers in an effort to slash expenses. Aramark, Sodexho and Canteen play a large role in feeding inmates. Aramark’s correctional services division currently feeds over 300,000 inmates in 40 states. Sodexho runs the kitchens at 450 prisons in the U.S. and has ties to the private, for-profit prison industry. A major provider of food services to colleges and universities throughout North America, Sodexho chose to divest its 17 percent stake in the publicly traded Corrections Corporation of America after students opposed to large-scale incarceration—and particularly the privatization of prisons—boycotted the Sodexho-operated facilities at a dozen U.S. and Canadian campuses from 2000–2002. Nevertheless, Sodexho continues to manage kitchens in over 80 correctional facilities in Europe and South America.
The appeal of outsourcing correctional facilities’ food service to private corporations is simple: cost savings. Aramark promises “innovative pricing solutions to fit your budget,” and the State of Kentucky estimates that it saves over $4 million per year outsourcing food production to the company. These savings, however, come with hidden costs. Last summer, prisoners in Kentucky protested the “slop,” as they put it, served to them, by setting fire to the prison canteen and kitchen at the Northpoint Training Center near Danville. This was the second food-related riot in Kentucky in three years. Critics of the privatization of prison food services point out that the practice may save money, but that the profit-motive leads companies to contain costs through smaller portions and lower-quality ingredients. David Reutter, a Florida inmate and writer for Prison Legal News, a monthly magazine for incarcerated and non-incarcerated subscribers that covers prisoners’ rights issues and court rulings, points out that “prisoners have few options other than eating the food they are served; thus, prisons and jails are responsible for providing sufficient, nutritious diets. Food is a basic necessity, and failure to provide adequate meals can lead to health-related problems or even violence by hungry and frustrated prisoners.”
Calculating Costs
During the current economic downturn, some states seeking new ways to cut costs reduced the size of each meal or even eliminated one meal per day. Some Georgia prisons no longer serve lunch on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Other states allow calcium-fortified bread to replace milk on the menu during periods of high dairy prices; soy or nut protein bars, fortified soy milk and soy meat substitutes also allow food services to meet nutritional and caloric targets with minimal cost. When prisoners fill the void through the canteen or care packages, the costs of feeding incarcerated people is shifted to the prisoners and their families. There is no direct evidence that New York makes unappetizing food in an explicit effort to keep inmates away from the mess hall, but the average of 12 percent of all inmates at Fishkill who do not eat in the dining hall saves the cost of feeding 200 inmates per day. In Florida, which until recently contracted with Aramark, that number was 15 percent. Reutter notes that Florida paid its food contract based on head count rather than meal trays, so that Aramark’s profits increased with each prisoner who stayed away from the mess hall.
Prisoners who opt out of the mess hall rely on care packages and purchases from the commissary. They can receive up to 35 pounds of care packages per month, the contents of which are closely controlled by DOCS Directive 4911. All food must be commercially packed and hermetically sealed and cannot require refrigeration or freezing. This leads to a diet heavy in ramen noodles, chips, nuts, canned meat and fish. The commissary sells packaged food and spices, and some dormitories have microwaves allowing Fishkill’s inmates to seek relief from the offerings in the mess hall with heavily spiced stews and sauces comprised entirely of commissary and care-package ingredients. Packaged food like ramen noodles might be combined with beans, canned chicken and jalapeño cheese to provide a spicy relief from the monotonous beiges and browns of the mess hall.
Care packages and canteen recipes also provide comfort to many inmates. African-Americans with southern roots, immigrants from Jamaica, South or Central America, or Italian-Americans can make dishes that evoke food memories, seeking comfort and companionship on special occasions. At birthdays or other celebrations, pancake mix becomes cake mix; tortillas become pie dough. Peanut butter can be mixed with coffee and chocolate to serve as frosting for a chocolate cookie cake. When it’s time to party and fashion some truly innovative intoxicants, canteen ingredients can be transformed into temporary relief from the daily banality of a long stretch behind the razor wire. This is nowhere more clear than in “Recipe for Prison Pruno,” California inmate Jarvis Masters’s poem that uses the classic recipe for the prison hooch made of mashed fruit, sugar and ketchup as a metaphor for his temporary and futile effort to add some interest to his remaining days,
Place the bag into your sink,
denied your motion for a new trial,
and heat it with hot running water for 15 minutes.
It is the order of the Court that you suffer death,
wrap towels around the bag to keep it warm for fermentation.
said penalty to be inflicted within the walls of San Quentin,
Stash the bag in your cell undisturbed for 48 hours,
at which place you shall be put to death,
…
with a spoon, skim off the mash, and I have caused the seal of this Court to be affixed thereto. pour the remaining portion into two 18 oz. cups.
May God have mercy on your soul.
Fear of a Quiet Mess Hall
Food takes on great significance in other ways in a correctional facility. Running out of a favored dish before everyone has made it through the line, a string of bad meals, running out of spoons or accusations of spitting into a dish can be a catalyst for a fight. The mess hall itself carries important meanings to the inmates eating there. It is one of the few places in the facility—the open-air yards being the other—where inmates congregate. At times, this makes mess halls an ideal place to stage mass protests. While most accounts of the Attica prison takeover of 1971 begin with the overpowering of correctional officers on September 9, its beginnings can be traced to an incident in the cafeteria the previous month. On August 22, inmates showed solidarity across racial, religious and political lines by wearing black armbands and refusing to eat. Their silent protest was a peaceful vigil to the murder of San Quentin inmate George Jackson the day before. While prisoner activism isn’t quite what it used to be, a silent dining hall remains a foreboding occurrence today. Joe Britto, a retired corrections counselor who worked at Eastern Correctional Facility and Downstate Correctional Facility in the 1980s and 1990s, says “the scariest moment I had working in a prison was walking into the silent dining hall. You could hear a pin drop in a room with 800 men, and I knew the shit would hit the fan. And it did.” Britto feels that the mess hall was among the best locations to sense the climate of the facility on any given day.
The mess halls are suitably noisy and busy in Fishkill on the day I am there (a healthy sign), perhaps because it is hot dog day. The most popular meals are the least complicated: hot dogs, fried chicken, sausage and peppers. The watery and heavily sauced beef cacciatore, meatless vegetable stew and barbeque beef cubes have fewer adherents. It is really best that I say nothing at all about the dehydrated and reconstituted chicken in cream sauce, a Sysco product para doxically labeled “global chicken.” The kitchen is efficient and professional, with inmates operating massive steamers—some dating back to the World War II era—filled with trays of chicken hot dogs. Those in the general population eat in one of four mess halls, each holding between 250 and 400 men; the largest mess hall has a high ceiling and an inmate-painted mural of the Hudson River with Anthony’s Nose—the mountain that is the eastern terminus of the Bear Mountain Bridge—in the background, almost pleasant enough to pull my eyes away from the bar-covered windows with views of a paved exercise area. The inmates at Fishkill live in dormitories rather than cells, with each inmate assigned an area about the size of a small office cubicle. Inmates queue up for lunch at 11:25 by unit—anywhere from 24 to 48 men per unit—and enter the mess hall. They file in quietly, wait on line, get up to three chicken hot dogs and rolls, sauerkraut, beans and applesauce. They get 20 minutes to eat, but many finish faster before busing their own trays, showing the officers their utensils as they return them, and filing back to their dormitory and next program, which can include therapy, drug or alcohol counseling and vocational training.
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For many non-incarcerated residents of the Hudson Valley, prisons seem out of character with the picturesque and natural charm evoked in the 19th-century works of artists like Thomas Cole and Frederick Church. Back then, a trip up the river provided a welcome and healthful diversion from the stressful and dirty life of an industrial city. The greenmarkets, farm-to-table restaurants and 100-mile diets of our own time have renewed these links between urban New Yorkers and those of us who make a permanent home in the Valley. Prisons, however, have long been a major piece of the region’s character and economy. Prisoners from Auburn Prison in the Finger Lakes region constructed Sing Sing in 1826. By the beginning of the 20th century, going “up the river” already meant a jail term in Sing Sing and, eventually, any prison. The late 19th and early 20th century saw something of a prison boom in the Valley. Originally constructed in 1892 as the Asylum for Insane Criminals—better known as Matteawan—later became the medium security Fishkill Correctional in the late 1970s. After the construction of Matteawan came Eastern Correctional, a turn-of-the-last-century fortress near Ellenville. Bedford Hills in Westchester County followed in 1901. The second wave came during the Depression, with facilities in Wallkill, Coxsackie, Beekman and Woodbourne. There would be another prison building boom in the 1970s and 1980s, with Downstate, Sullivan and Shawangunk all constructed to house the prisoners of the war on drugs. All tolled, the 17 facilities in the mid–Hudson Valley and eastern Catskills hold over 16,000 men and women.
Leaving Fishkill, I think about the conjoined histories of incarceration and the Hudson River Valley. In 1852, Hudson River School painter Asher Durand sat on the banks of the Hudson in Newburgh and captured the scene before him: the rolling farms and hills on the opposite bank that would become the site of Matteawan a generation later. Mat teawan’s original Isaac Perry-designed 1892 building still stands as the prison’s west facade. As I drive past the Perry building’s broken windows and empty shell, I enter rolling fields that extend to Beacon High School on one side and I-84 on the other. The old Asylum and rolling fields are reminders of the link between prisons and the Valley, but they are also reminders of a different way of feeding people. When it housed those classified as criminally insane, Matte-awan boasted a 900-acre farm and an occupational therapy program in which patients prepared and served the meals. The fences that now cut the facility off from the rest of the residents of the region weren’t here back then; so, they can obscure the fact that the people held in Matteawan were here because they could be transported via river or train and be fed by the facility’s own farms, all within relatively close proximity to New York City.
Food service is really just a small piece of what places like Fishkill do. They are asked to protect and serve, judge fairly and firmly, punish and rehabilitate; and they are asked to do it cheaply. With the lengthening of prison sentences over the previous 40 years, the Department of Correctional Services increasingly resembles other social service agencies, struggling to provide mental health, medical and hospice services to an expanding and aging population. The kitchen and mess halls at Fishkill call into question some of the stereotypes we have of hardened prisoners and sadistic correctional staff. The correctional officers and civilian cooks are firm but friendly. The convict cooks move through their tasks professionally and efficiently, perhaps hoping to move up to the next step in the kitchen’s hierarchy.
If food reveals something about the society that produces and consumes it, then the dull monotony of the food at Fishkill Correctional Facility perfectly reflects contemporary practices of incarceration. The correctional staff and inmates at Fishkill navigate this difficult terrain on a daily basis, cycling through the days, weeks, months and years of the general confinement menu as they persevere through their shifts and sentences.
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