Prison agriculture in the United States: racial capitalism and the disciplinary matrix of exploitation and rehabilitation

Chennault, Carrie; Sbicca, Joshua

doi:10.1007/s10460-022-10346-x

Cited by 12 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Several scholars have noted similar tensions and contradictions within carceral food systems and spaces. In Chennault and Sbicca's (2023) critical review of prison agriculture in the United States, they develop what they term a disciplinary matrix, to highlight the diverse and at times competing rationales that drive these activities, oscillating between forms of discipline, exploitation and rehabilitation. In Hazelett's (2023) exploration of the possibilities for carceral food justice within prison garden programs, he concludes that prison gardens represent a duality (perhaps a paradox even) in that they are fundamentally reformist in nature, but also offer moments of resistance and possibility to work towards carceral food justice.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unpacking the Prison Food Paradox: Formerly Incarcerated Individuals’ Experience of Food within Federal Prisons in Canada

Wilson

2023

SSJ

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This paper presents findings from a survey conducted with formerly incarcerated individuals on their experiences of food and food systems within federal prisons in Canada. Beyond affirming the many problems with the quality and quantity of food provided to incarcerated individuals, the findings discussed in this article highlight the multi-faceted and paradoxical role of food behind bars. Food was a tool of punishment and a site of conflict, yet it simultaneously provides an important source of community and camaraderie. While there can be no “just” carceral food system because carceral systems are inherently unjust systems, a conversation about food provisioning within prison helps bring into focus opportunities to improve the material conditions of incarcerated individuals in the short-term as well as openings to question the logic and legitimacy of carceral institutions more broadly. As we are all bound-up in carceral food systems, there is a collective responsibility to interrogate and make visible the realities of carceral food systems in order to work towards non-carceral futures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unpacking the Prison Food Paradox: Formerly Incarcerated Individuals’ Experience of Food within Federal Prisons in Canada

Wilson

2023

SSJ

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“…Beyond thermal issues with infrastructure in carceral space, incarcerated populations are increasingly leased as farm labor in the United States as labor shortages in agriculture result from anti-immigrant policies (Rice 2019). Chennault and Sbicca (2023, 180) identify “662 state-operated adult prisons with agricultural activities” in the United States, with the American South having “the highest percentage of prisons with these assignments.” The result is an instance—alongside those outlined above in flooding and wildfires—where the thermal inequity of carceral space overlaps with the thermal inequity of occupational thermal safety. In carceral spaces already replete with co-produced racial, economic, and gender disparities, prison agricultural labor exposes inmates to the possibility of additional thermal extremes through the indifference of capitalist food systems.…”

Section: Atmospheric and Climatic Inequitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical physical geographies of air, atmosphere, and climate

Colucci,

Vecellio,

Allen

2023

Progress in Environmental Geography

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The material condition of the earth's atmosphere exerts a significant influence on how humans live and die. Therefore, understanding how and why atmospheric processes unevenly impact communities, because of the changing material condition of air, provides an opportunity to address current and future climate risks through interdisciplinary perspectives. Using critical physical geography as a framework, this review provides perspective on how physical geographers may interact more closely with human geographers in addressing social-environmental issues related to the state of the earth's atmosphere and climate, and related processes in other earth systems. Climatic and atmospheric variability and change disproportionately impact populations already disadvantaged within this capitalist social formation. Using labor policy, flooding, wildfires, and incarceration as materially grounded examples where atmospheric inequities are experienced by everyday people, we demonstrate how taking a critical physical geography approach to the earth's air might highlight disciplinary synergies and build stronger cross-geography relationships. These examples demonstrate the interconnectedness of the atmosphere with other earth systems, both environmental and social, and how these connections co-produce atmospheric inequities experienced by human populations.

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“…How prison farm labor is presented matters, in part, because it is still practiced at many carceral institutions; there are some seven hundred state prisons across the country that maintain work sites engaged in the production of plants, food, and animal husbandry. 23 Approving stories on prison agricultural labor are also not just feel-good stories of little consequence. Such stories, which rely on the cooperation of corrections officials for access to prisons and incarcerated people, reassure the public about U.S. carceral conditions.…”

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confidence: 99%

Greenwashing “Modern Day Slavery” through the Mystique of Prison Farm Labor

Jou

2024

Inter. Labor Working-Class Hist.

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In Charleston, Maine, a town of about 1,500 near the center of the state, there is an orchard with 750 apple trees and a farm where a variety of produce is grown.1 This bucolic setting is on the grounds of the Mountain View Correctional Facility, a 374-bed minimum- and medium-security state prison.2 Incarcerated people tend to the apple trees and vegetables, and every year they cultivate 100,000 pounds of produce that wind up on their prison cafeteria, or chow hall, trays.3 Writing for the New York Times in 2021, Patricia Leigh Brown highlighted how Mountain View's prison food service manager Mark McBrine, who also happened to be “an organic farmer with dirt under his fingernails,” was “making the prison a pioneer in a nascent farm-to-prison table movement.”4 According to multiple media outlets that have reported on Mountain View's food system, it is a model to be emulated—both an antidote to dreary prison food and a cost-saver for the state of Maine.5

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Prison agriculture in the United States: racial capitalism and the disciplinary matrix of exploitation and rehabilitation

Cited by 12 publications

References 39 publications

Unpacking the Prison Food Paradox: Formerly Incarcerated Individuals’ Experience of Food within Federal Prisons in Canada

Unpacking the Prison Food Paradox: Formerly Incarcerated Individuals’ Experience of Food within Federal Prisons in Canada

Critical physical geographies of air, atmosphere, and climate

Greenwashing “Modern Day Slavery” through the Mystique of Prison Farm Labor

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