Update

Dear Prison Society Supporters,

As we gather with family and friends over our favorite fall dishes, a special Thanksgiving week tour at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site reminds us that incarcerated people are still deprived of a dignified dining experience and consistent access to nutritious food. The Prison Society is honored to partner with Eastern State in bringing attention to this issue through our report on food service in Pennsylvania state prisons, which is featured throughout the tour. 

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A return to a “19th-century model”

Communal dining was not part of Eastern State's original design when it opened in 1829. As the world’s first penitentiary, Eastern State modeled a system of extreme solitary confinement that the penitentiary's designers believed was necessary for rehabilitation. Meals were delivered to each incarcerated person through a small window in their cell, and they ate in total isolation. 

The Thanksgiving week tour brings visitors to Soup Alley, the kitchen and dining area wedged in the “armpit” between two of the historic Philadelphia prison’s long cellblocks. Soup Alley wasn’t added to Eastern State until almost 100 years after its opening, when prison administrators recognized the damaging effects of solitary confinement.

Visitors learn that now, nearly 200 years since Eastern State opened, people in Pennsylvania prisons are once again eating in their cells. During the pandemic, state prisons switched to in-cell dining and have kept it in place in all but one of 23 facilities. 

The tour emphasizes that “the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is going back to a 19th century model of feeding people in prison,” says Damon McCool, senior manager of program development at Eastern State.

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The connections between food and health, then and now

Standing among the ruins of rusted-out ovens and crumbling cinder block walls, guides also educate visitors on the hunger and malnourishment that are common in Pennsylvania prisons today. They note that prison menus are deficient in calories, leaving 80% of men incarcerated in state prisons to report feeling hungry every day, as they pass around a copy of a typewritten prison menu from April 1949. It features regional dishes like “fried scrapple,” vegetable sides like “Harvard beets,” and rich entrees like “pot roast of beef” that were often made from scratch by incarcerated cooks, in contrast to the processed and prepared foods that are common today.

The tour emphasizes the links between prison food and health. Historically, nutritious food was considered important to fortify a population that was vulnerable to lengthy illnesses of tuberculosis. Today, modern science has demonstrated the links between diet and chronic diseases that are prevalent among incarcerated people. Incarcerated people are one-and-a-half times more likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes, or asthma than the general population, and 40% more likely to have any chronic illness. The Prison Society’s research found that state prison menus contain twice the recommended amount of starchy vegetables and refined carbohydrates and half the recommended fruit and vegetable servings, exacerbating chronic-disease risk.

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A step in the right direction

After the Prison Society shared the results of the report with the Department of Corrections, it promptly developed new menus that increased calories and addressed deficiencies in fiber. This was a major step in the right direction, but the new menus still fall short on most of the same nutrition measures as the old ones.

McCool says that the story that Eastern State tells about the history of American prisons is not one of continuous, linear progress, but rather a series of ongoing reforms. That’s why the museum tries to highlight connections between the historic prison, which closed in 1971, and the state of corrections today.

“Issues impacting people in prison don't stop when Eastern State closed,” he says, “and the Prison Society's report is such a great example of how issues like food continue to impact people in prison and their families and their health outcomes.”

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Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site is offering hourly tours of Soup Alley through December 1.

Read the Prison Society’s full report, “Hungry and Malnourished: Food Service in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.”