The essay “States of Decomposition – Eating in New York State Prison” was written by Sara G. Kielly, an incarcerated writer in New York State. The state of prison food in the United States is widely described as appalling, characterized by heavily processed meals high in salt, sugar, and refined carbs, leading to chronic health issues like diabetes and heart disease. Foods lacking nutritional value, compounded by unsanitary conditions, mold, pests, and insufficient fresh food, make the lack of receiving basic nutrition a systemic injustice that harms physical and mental health and perpetuates cycles of poor health.
Part of the problem is a conflict of interest. All three of the major private food providers in the prison food industry (Aramark, Trinity Services Group, Keefe Group) also have a stake in the quickly growing prison commissary business, where incarcerated people can buy staples like ramen, tuna and coffee, as well as chips, cookies and other snacks. Yet these items are often sold at a significant markup that, considering the low rate of prison wages, makes obtaining these materials difficult.
In the last decade, several states quickly jettisoned private contracts after lawsuits revealed unsanitary and, frankly, disgusting conditions. In 2021, Mississippi canceled a contract with Aramark after a federal lawsuit described “spoiled, rotten, molded or uncooked” food, contaminated with rat, bird or insect feces. In 2015, Michigan switched from Aramark to Trinity for similar reasons, only to have many of the same problems: maggots, mold, and dirt in food, and bouts of food poisoning. Michigan eventually resumed managing its own food service when its three-year, nearly $159-million contract with Trinity ended in 2018.
“They aren’t asking for five-star meals,” Marcy Croft, the attorney on the Mississippi lawsuit said. “They’re just asking for food that’s edible and that can keep them alive; it’s a very basic request.”
Excerpts from the essay are included below.
My childhood was replete with family meals and cookouts. Even after I moved out and was, at times, homeless, I always knew that I could turn to my mother for a warm meal. I reveled in the foods I loved and had no problem turning up my nose at food I disliked. (Consider the horror that is egg salad or cooked greens!) Until I was 22, I got to decide what I ate.
That liberty no longer exists for me. Come January, I will have been incarcerated for fourteen years. The meals served in the mess hall of New York state’s Bedford Hills Correctional Facility are disgusting: often soy-based proteins accompanied by undercooked rice, pasta, potatoes, or bread. The food is packaged by individuals at other facilities, shipped to Bedford Hills, then boiled or reconstituted with water. It’s possible to purchase basic ingredients like sugar at the commissary, but to access a wider variety of produce and meats, I have to receive them from outside — at costs far exceeding the approximately eight dollars a month I earn through my prison work as a teacher’s assistant for a pre-GED class. As a result, for most of my time at Bedford Hills, I have relied on financial assistance from family, friends, and outside organizations.
Over the last several months, I have lost the contents of food orders more often than I have received them. By the time packages were delivered to me, grapes had liquified; asparagus had turned into a moldy paste; and grass-fed beef sirloin had rotted, turning an iridescent green after officers removed dry ice from the packaging. Even nonperishable items have been contaminated by spoiled foods in the same boxes.
Even though this food is inedible, correctional staff still think it’s appropriate — or entertaining — to deliver it to incarcerated individuals. This practice risks spreading food poisoning and creates a feeling of dehumanization among the incarcerated population. Those of us who are incarcerated are human beings, and we should be guaranteed dignity and access to nutritious food.
You can read the full essay “States of Decomposition – Eating in New York State Prison” by by Sara G. Kielly in The Drift Mag, a magazine of culture, literature, and politics.
Sara G. Kielly is an investigative journalist, a poet, and a jailhouse lawyer currently incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York. Her work has appeared in Slate, Spotlong Review, New York Amsterdam News, New York Focus, and Film Comment. She is a 2025 recipient of Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting grant and is currently working on a memoir titled Slow Bleed: A Transgender Woman’s Journey to Survival in Men’s Maximum-Security Prisons.
