Blog by Helen Sandwell, January 2024
The role of food within a rehabilitative culture
Unless a sentence carries a whole life order, all those serving a custodial sentence will have the opportunity to be released at some point. Effective rehabilitation whilst in prison is the key to turning their lives around and enabling them to stay crime-free upon release.
Prisons are increasingly focussing on creating a rehabilitative culture, which supports people in turning away from crime and towards a different, better life. Better reoffending outcomes are related to a rehabilitative culture where there is hope, decency, safety, security, prisoner wellbeing and personal development. Other factors identified as being key in a rehabilitative culture include a positive physical environment, building positive relationships, developing positive identity change, and building social capital. We believe that food can and should play an important role in any prison which strives to create a rehabilitative culture.
Building social capital is a valuable factor in a rehabilitative culture. People who receive more visits in prison have better outcomes after release. Unfortunately, visitors to prisons often experience ‘secondary prisonisation’ – they feel that throughout the visiting process, they are treated as if they themselves are in prison, merely because they are connected to someone in prison. This can be discouraging, reducing the number of visits. Many prisons are trying to improve the visitor experience, and this often includes food as a means of normalisation and bringing loved ones together. For example, at HMP High Down, family lunches for life-sentenced prisoners are held in the Clink restaurant. These have received positive feedback from families.
Rehabilitative relationships involve interactions where people are enabled to think in different ways, which include taking on other people’s perspectives. Cooking and eating together has been identified as being at the heart of building relationships and could be used as a tool for building relationships between fellow prisoners and between prisoners and staff. Commensality, the act of eating and drinking together in a social setting, promotes social integration and engagement in practices and behaviours that make a contribution to the well-being of others. An example of commensality in action is at HMP Springhill. Here, meals are shared at religious festivals, for example at Eid, Muslim residents can invite a guests of a different faith, so as to encourage a multi-cultural community. In the HM Inspector of Prisons thematic review: The experiences of adult black male prisoner and black male staff, one of the recommendations for building trust put forward by prisoners and staff was making and sharing food together. Such an idea of prisoners and prison staff sitting down to share a meal together is still only happening in small pockets, but at Food Matters we orchestrated cook and eat sessions involving women PIPE residents and PIPE staff at HMP Send, as part of our Food Matters Inside and Out programme supported by HMPPS Innovations grant funding. After preparing a number of dishes together, everyone sat down around a large table to share the meal and chat.
Research into desistance has found that identity change is an important aspect of stopping crime, so one important goal of a rehabilitative culture is to help people try out identities other than the identity of criminal that they have been labelled with, by themselves and society. A different more positive identity allows them to experience the satisfaction that comes from helping others, and create new connections that they view positively. Cooking has been identified as a means of enabling prisoners to change their identity ‘from crook to cook.’ In Danish prisons, all prisoners serving sentences self-cater. Self-catering is a reflection of the Danish correctional principle of normalisation. Doing ‘normal things’ builds confidence and allows the prisoners to feel and be responsible, whilst providing a means to practice positive living in a community setting, since the prison aims to mirror the community as much as possible. Self-catering in prisons allows prisoners to connect with a positive identity that is associated with respect, wisdom, and self-efficacy. Taken one step further, into the work environment, charities like The Clink and The Right Course have demonstrated that training prisoners in catering and food service in a professional environment serving the public, can lead directly to employment and an end to recidivism.
The physical environment is important to a rehabilitative culture, since poor physical conditions are associated with reduced well-being, poor health, violence and disorder, and impacts on both staff and prisoners. The current physical environment relating to food in many prisons is far from ideal. Many communal eating areas have been lost, so prisoners have to eat their meals in their cramped cells, in the proximity of their toilet – hardly an environment of decency and dignity. Few prisons provide cooking facilities on wings, but this does not prevent the strong desire of many to cook themselves the meals that they find comforting and reflect their cultural identity. Prisoners will always find their own, often unsafe ways of cooking in their cells. However, there are examples of prisons finding ways to provide facilities for basic cooking and eating together on the wings, for example HMP Manchester, which has repurposed space such as old shower facilities on each wing to provide a basic kitchen.
There are many more examples of how important food is in rehabilitative culture and some of these such as security, life skills and mental well-being will be discussed in other blogs in this series accompanying our report Food Matters in Prisons. There can be no doubt that if food is just viewed as fuel in prisons, it is massively underestimating its power in contributing to the smooth running of prisons and the rehabilitation of prisoners.
You can read and download Food Matters in Prisons here.
You can read and download the Executive Summary here.
Blog by Helen Sandwell, January 2024
The role of food within a rehabilitative culture
Unless a sentence carries a whole life order, all those serving a custodial sentence will have the opportunity to be released at some point. Effective rehabilitation whilst in prison is the key to turning their lives around and enabling them to stay crime-free upon release.
Prisons are increasingly focussing on creating a rehabilitative culture, which supports people in turning away from crime and towards a different, better life. Better reoffending outcomes are related to a rehabilitative culture where there is hope, decency, safety, security, prisoner wellbeing and personal development. Other factors identified as being key in a rehabilitative culture include a positive physical environment, building positive relationships, developing positive identity change, and building social capital. We believe that food can and should play an important role in any prison which strives to create a rehabilitative culture.
Building social capital is a valuable factor in a rehabilitative culture. People who receive more visits in prison have better outcomes after release. Unfortunately, visitors to prisons often experience ‘secondary prisonisation’ – they feel that throughout the visiting process, they are treated as if they themselves are in prison, merely because they are connected to someone in prison. This can be discouraging, reducing the number of visits. Many prisons are trying to improve the visitor experience, and this often includes food as a means of normalisation and bringing loved ones together. For example, at HMP High Down, family lunches for life-sentenced prisoners are held in the Clink restaurant. These have received positive feedback from families.
Rehabilitative relationships involve interactions where people are enabled to think in different ways, which include taking on other people’s perspectives. Cooking and eating together has been identified as being at the heart of building relationships and could be used as a tool for building relationships between fellow prisoners and between prisoners and staff. Commensality, the act of eating and drinking together in a social setting, promotes social integration and engagement in practices and behaviours that make a contribution to the well-being of others. An example of commensality in action is at HMP Springhill. Here, meals are shared at religious festivals, for example at Eid, Muslim residents can invite a guests of a different faith, so as to encourage a multi-cultural community. In the HM Inspector of Prisons thematic review: The experiences of adult black male prisoner and black male staff, one of the recommendations for building trust put forward by prisoners and staff was making and sharing food together. Such an idea of prisoners and prison staff sitting down to share a meal together is still only happening in small pockets, but at Food Matters we orchestrated cook and eat sessions involving women PIPE residents and PIPE staff at HMP Send, as part of our Food Matters Inside and Out programme supported by HMPPS Innovations grant funding. After preparing a number of dishes together, everyone sat down around a large table to share the meal and chat.
Research into desistance has found that identity change is an important aspect of stopping crime, so one important goal of a rehabilitative culture is to help people try out identities other than the identity of criminal that they have been labelled with, by themselves and society. A different more positive identity allows them to experience the satisfaction that comes from helping others, and create new connections that they view positively. Cooking has been identified as a means of enabling prisoners to change their identity ‘from crook to cook.’ In Danish prisons, all prisoners serving sentences self-cater. Self-catering is a reflection of the Danish correctional principle of normalisation. Doing ‘normal things’ builds confidence and allows the prisoners to feel and be responsible, whilst providing a means to practice positive living in a community setting, since the prison aims to mirror the community as much as possible. Self-catering in prisons allows prisoners to connect with a positive identity that is associated with respect, wisdom, and self-efficacy. Taken one step further, into the work environment, charities like The Clink and The Right Course have demonstrated that training prisoners in catering and food service in a professional environment serving the public, can lead directly to employment and an end to recidivism.
The physical environment is important to a rehabilitative culture, since poor physical conditions are associated with reduced well-being, poor health, violence and disorder, and impacts on both staff and prisoners. The current physical environment relating to food in many prisons is far from ideal. Many communal eating areas have been lost, so prisoners have to eat their meals in their cramped cells, in the proximity of their toilet – hardly an environment of decency and dignity. Few prisons provide cooking facilities on wings, but this does not prevent the strong desire of many to cook themselves the meals that they find comforting and reflect their cultural identity. Prisoners will always find their own, often unsafe ways of cooking in their cells. However, there are examples of prisons finding ways to provide facilities for basic cooking and eating together on the wings, for example HMP Manchester, which has repurposed space such as old shower facilities on each wing to provide a basic kitchen.
There are many more examples of how important food is in rehabilitative culture and some of these such as security, life skills and mental well-being will be discussed in other blogs in this series accompanying our report Food Matters in Prisons. There can be no doubt that if food is just viewed as fuel in prisons, it is massively underestimating its power in contributing to the smooth running of prisons and the rehabilitation of prisoners.
You can read and download Food Matters in Prisons here.
You can read and download the Executive Summary here.
