Eating Behind Bars by Leslie Soble, with Alex Busansky, Dr. Aishatu R. Yusuf, and Impact Justice was named a 2026 James Beard Foundation Book Award Nominee in the Food Issues and Advocacy category.
Prisons and jails are America’s hidden “food deserts,” where hunger and malnourishment coexist with shocking levels of food waste because much of what is served is so awful it ends up in the trash. This disturbing portrait came to light in 2020 when the nonprofit Impact Justice released the first-ever national examination of food in prison, catapulting the issue from the margins of prison litigation to the center of national conversations about mass incarceration and food justice. This landmark book digs deeper, revealing how a systemic drive to cut costs at the expense of health and decency has created a food crisis affecting millions of incarcerated Americans.
Read the introduction to Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison below.
