This book explores the topic of food and foodways within American jails and prisons. It focuses on food as a political item in the service of control when executed by jail and prison personnel, as well as a mechanism of resistance on the part of the prisoners themselves.

The ’punitive turn’ has brought about new ways of thinking about geography and the state, and has highlighted spaces of incarceration as a new terrain for exploration by geographers. Carceral geography offers a geographical perspective on incarceration, and this volume accordingly tracks the ideas, practices and engagements that have shaped the development of this new and vibrant subdiscipline, and scopes out future research directions. By conveying a sense of the debates, directions, and threads within the field of carceral geography, it traces the inner workings of this dynamic field, its synergies with criminology and prison sociology, and its likely future trajectories. Synthesizing existing work in carceral geography, and exploring the future directions it might take, the book develops a notion of the ’carceral’ as spatial, emplaced, mobile, embodied and affective.

This book reconsiders the use of food metaphors and the relationship between law and food in an interdisciplinary perspective to examine how food related topics can be used to describe or identify rules, norms, or prescriptions of all kinds. The links between law and food are as old as the concept of law. Many authors have been using such links in creative ways to express specific features of law. This is because the language of food and cooking offers legal thinkers and teachers mouth-watering metaphors, comparing rules to recipes, and their combination to culinary processes. This collection focuses on this relationship between law and food and takes us far beyond their mere interaction, to explore different ways of using these two apparently so diverse elements to describe different phenomena of the legal reality. The authors use the link between food and law to describe different aspects of the legal landscape in different areas and jurisdictions. Bringing together metaphors and indirect correlations between law and food, the book explores different models of approaching legal issues and considering different legal challenges from a completely new perspective, in line with the multidisciplinary approach that leads comparative legal studies today and, to a certain extent, revisiting and enriching it. With contributions in English and French, the book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of law and food, law and language, and comparative legal studies.

This general issue of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons edited by Justin Piché and Kevin Walby features articles by current and former prisoners documenting the latest trends in penal policy and practice in the United States. The issue also features an article to “The Dialogue on the Canadian Carceral State” that explores the punitiveness of Canada’s immigration system, a “Response” paper on the struggle over the future of the decommissioned Prison for Women (P4W) as a site of memory, as well as “Prisoners’ Struggles” contributions, and a book review. The cover art, featuring the pieces “Carceral Landscape” and “Close the Bastard Down!”, was created by Peter Collins – a former Canadian prisoner serving a life sentence who died behind bars of cancer. Published in English.

Food is a central component of life in correctional institutions and plays a critical role in the physical and mental health of incarcerated people and the construction of prisoners identities and relationships. An understanding of the role of food in correctional settings and effective management of food systems may improve outcomes for incarcerated people and help correctional administrators to maximize the health and safety of individuals in these institutions. This report summarizes existing research about food systems in correctional settings and provides examples of food programmes in prison and remand facilities including a case study of food-related innovation in the Danish correctional system. Specific conclusions are offered for policy-makers administrators of correctional institutions and prison food services professionals and ideas for future research are proposed.

Although service outsourcing has spread throughout Canada’s prisons and jails, into its police, courts, and national security institutions, and along the border in recent decades, the expanding scope and pace of corporate involvement in criminal justice functions has not yet been closely investigated. Changing of the Guards provides a detailed assessment of privatization and private influence across the twenty-first-century Canadian criminal justice system. It illuminates the many consequences of public–private arrangements for law and policy, transparency, accountability, the administration of justice, equity, and the public. This trenchant analysis raises issues that are relevant in Canada and abroad.

A unique and edgy cookbook, Prison Ramen takes readers behind bars with more than 65 ramen recipes and stories of prison life from the inmate/cooks who devised them, including celebrities like Slash from Guns n’ Roses and the actor Shia LaBeouf. Instant ramen is a ubiquitous food, beloved by anyone looking for a cheap, tasty bite—including prisoners, who buy it at the commissary and use it as the building block for all sorts of meals. Think of this as a unique cookbook of ramen hacks. Here’s Ramen Goulash. Black Bean Ramen. Onion Tortilla Ramen Soup. The Jailhouse Hole Burrito. Orange Porkies—chili ramen plus white rice plus ½ bag of pork skins plus orange-flavored punch. Ramen Nuggets. Slash’s J-Walking Ramen (with scallions, Sriracha hot sauce, and minced pork). Coauthors Gustavo “Goose” Alvarez and Clifton Collins Jr. are childhood friends—one an ex-con, now free and living in Mexico, and the other a highly successful Hollywood character actor who’s enlisted friends and celebrities to contribute their recipes and stories. Forget flowery writing about precious, organic ingredients—these stories are a first-person, firsthand look inside prison life, a scared-straight reality to complement the offbeat recipes.