Food insecurity is often seen as a challenge faced outside of institutional walls, but for millions of incarcerated individuals, access to nutritious, diverse, and quality food remains a critical issue. In prisons across the Northeast, food serves not only as sustenance but as a reflection of human dignity, health, and opportunity for rehabilitation. Yet, many facilities still struggle with outdated systems that fail to recognize the importance of nutrition, cultural relevance, and community voice.
At this upcoming webinar, you will hear from leading organizations working to reshape the food landscape within carceral facilities. Experts will present insights and data to help frame the issue, and then share innovative strategies, policy reforms, and community-led initiatives aimed at improving the quality and diversity of food served.
Addressing food inequities in prisons is a powerful entry point to advancing racial justice and promoting holistic community health. By investing in food justice within correctional systems, we can nurture a more humane and equitable approach that benefits individuals, families, and communities across the region.
Join us to deepen your understanding of this often hidden issue. Together we can help forge a future where food in prisons reflects not just nutritional standards, but values of dignity, diversity, and justice.
What will you learn?
- Explore how current prison food systems reflect larger issues of racial and economic injustice, and the role funders can play in fostering meaningful change.
- Hear firsthand from organizations leading efforts to incorporate local, sustainable ingredients, promote food justice, and empower marginalized communities affected by incarceration.
- Understand the barriers faced by groups working to improve food offerings in correctional facilities, and how they are being addressed.
- Examine the intersection of food justice, racial equity, and human rights within the criminal justice system.
Speakers
- Leslie Soble, Senior Program Manager, Food In Prison, Impact Justice
- Jennifer Scaife, Executive Director, Correctional Association of New York
- Britt Florio, Program Manager, Farm to Institution New England
- Jalal Sabur & Michael Capers, Sweet Freedom Farm
Who should attend?
All interested funders are welcome to attend! Whether your focus is on nutrition or hunger, food chain workers or farmland preservation, emergency food or food waste, we all have a part to play in creating the just food system that everyone deserves. We encourage your attendance whether you’re a long-time CFF member, just entering the field of food systems change, or a curious bystander.
How do you sign up?
10:00 – 11:30am ET
Zoom meeting
Members and Non-Member Funders: Please click on the "Register Now" link above. (no fee).
Please email register@philanthropynewyork.org with any questions.
More about the presenting organizations
Impact Justice advances safety, justice, and opportunity through boundary-breaking work that honors and empowers people and is changing expectations about what we can accomplish together. Their goal is to shift the status quo in the United States toward investments in healing, human potential, and individual and collective accountability as foundational elements of safe, thriving communities and away from punitive beliefs, practices, and systems that perpetuate racism and other structural oppressions, waste human potential, and make us less safe.
Correctional Association of New York (CANY) is designated by law to provide independent monitoring and oversight of New York State prisons to promote transparency and accountability; safeguard the human and civil rights of incarcerated people; identify and provoke a response to harmful practices and policies; promulgate information that supports reform, and advocate for the decreased use of incarceration in New York.
Farm to Institution New England (FINE) serves a dynamic network of communities, organizations, and institutions working together to create a just, equitable, and regenerative food system in New England and beyond.Institutions hold substantial power and wield significant influence in our food system through their food service, education, investment, employment and land use. We believe that developing institutional food value chains that are responsive to community needs and rooted in racial justice, food sovereignty and climate resilience is a critical way to leverage the power of institutions to change the food system.
Sweet Freedom Farm is a Black-led farm that grows culturally relevant, nutrient dense foods for communities impacted by food apartheid and the prison industrial complex. Their food moves through mutual aid programs, traditional food banks, and other institutions serving working families. This includes a monthly mail-order distribution program serving members of the community who are currently incarcerated. Sweet Freedom envisions a world free from prisons and from food apartheid. In the traditions of their elders and ancestors, they are working to bring that world to fruition by building regional networks around co-operative food systems and mutual aid.
