By Joseph Wilson and Ethan Corey
This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.
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Three apples and one petite banana. These were the only fresh produce items on the general-confinement menu in New York state prisons during one recent week this July. Those with money can buy additional produce from the commissary, but the selection isn’t much better — cucumbers, potatoes, garlic, onions, and bananas at one facility, for instance, when they’re in stock — and prices have risen more than 45 percent in the last five years.
In the past, incarcerated people’s friends and loved ones could send fresh produce in care packages, or even pick it up before visits from farm stands just outside the gates of some facilities. But in 2022, New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) banned most outside packages from friends and family, closing off crucial sources of fresh fruits and vegetables. (Disclosure: One of the authors helped found the Sing Sing Family Collective, which distributed produce to families visiting loved ones at that prison and fought the ban.)
In a statement provided to New York Focus, a DOCCS spokesperson wrote that the department had moved to limit packages except from private vendors at the recommendation of the Prison Violence Task Force, in an effort to address “the significant increase in the number of packages found to contain contraband drugs and weapons.”
DOCCS data shows that while contraband seizures in the package room have fallen 96 percent since the package ban took effect, violence in New York prisons has continued to increase. The lack of fresh produce may be making the problem worse, as a growing body of research links poor nutrition to mood disorders and increased levels of aggression in institutionalized populations.
A 2024 law that sought to expand access to farm-fresh produce in state prisons has proven toothless in practice. As a result, a recent report by the Correctional Association of New York (CANY), an independent state prison oversight body, found that incarcerated New Yorkers are fed a diet that fails to meet nutritional standards and contains nearly twice the recommended amount of sodium, risking their long-term health.
DOCCS maintains that its standardized menu and portion list are reviewed by trained dieticians to ensure compliance with dietary guidelines. In response to written questions, a spokesperson for DOCCS wrote, “The Department’s accredited food production center supplies food to all state correctional facilities in compliance with state law that requires incarcerated individuals be provided with a sufficient quantity of wholesome and nutritious food. This includes daily fresh fruits and vegetables.”
The department’s online cafeteria menu appears to contradict this claim, showing no more than three to four servings of fresh fruit or vegetables most weeks. And while the spokesperson noted that “DOCCS procures a very large amount of fresh produce from NYS farms,” they also explained that “Fresh produce may be served as a standalone item or incorporated into meals as prepared by the Food Production Center.” In other words, the department counts produce used as ingredients in meals that are cooked in a central processing facility, then frozen, distributed to correctional facilities across the state, and reheated as fulfilling its mandate to provide fresh produce.
The agency acknowledged that sodium levels in DOCCS meals exceed nutritional recommendations but told New York Focus that they’re only 42 percent higher than the maximum recommended quantity if “minimum portions of starches are consumed.”
Since DOCCS instituted its package ban, incarcerated people looking to supplement the limited produce options in the mess hall or commissary have had to pre-order packages of fruits and vegetables from private vendors. Those packages offer a wider variety. For instance, one vendor offers avocados, pineapples, and mangos, among other options. But perishable food can sit in prison package rooms for as long as three weeks before staff deliver it. Nearly half of all incarcerated people surveyed by CANY reported that their food packages had spoiled as a result of delays. Others told CANY they had experienced inconsistent access, thanks to suspected theft or allegedly arbitrary denials by correctional officers.
“I’ll never order a fresh produce package again. They always are spoiled,” said Samuel Bush, who said he ordered produce packages four times while incarcerated at Green Haven, a men’s prison in Dutchess County. “They turned fruit into contraband.”
The DOCCS spokesperson said that incarcerated people should use established grievance procedures if they receive spoiled produce, but described the program as a success.
New York lawmakers tried to address the broader problem in 2024. A bill sponsored by Assemblymember Eddie Gibbs and Senator Cordell Cleare required the state corrections commissioner to create a program purchasing fresh produce from New York farms and distributing it to prisons for “wholesome and nutritious food.”
The law took effect immediately when Governor Kathy Hochul signed it that November. But the bill set no minimum purchase, no mandatory frequency for serving fresh produce, and no public reporting requirements. Consequently, the current statewide menu remains identical to the one in effect before the law passed.
“Even if they’re getting two apples, they’re in compliance with the law,” said Sumeet Sharma, CANY’s director of policy and communications. “The legislator gets to claim a win, but it’s not a win—it’s just the status quo.”
Assemblymember Gibbs did not respond to calls for comment.
The impacts of substandard prison nutrition are difficult to quantify. DOCCS does not publicly disclose the prevalence of chronic health conditions in its prisons. Nonetheless, the link between nutrition and long-term health outcomes is well-established. The American Heart Association advises that overconsumption of processed foods and inadequate access to fresh produce can increase the risk of cardiovascular problems, including heart attacks and strokes. And that’s just as much the case in prisons as on the outside.
“People’s bodies don’t respond differently just because they’re in prison,” said Leslie Soble, an ethnographer and co-author of a 2025 book on food in prison.
Christopher Wynn, who is incarcerated at Green Haven, has high blood pressure and recently had a stroke — conditions he attributes partly to the food available to him in prison.
“Everything in the cafeteria is soy, or ultra-processed in the commissary,” he said, and he doesn’t have the money to regularly order produce packages. “I can’t afford it. Most of us can’t.”
It’s impossible to conclusively connect a particular stroke to a prison menu. But medical experts, including the Centers for Disease Control, note that eating fresh produce is a key factor in reducing the risk of strokes and improving recovery outcomes.
Exacerbating the problem, said Sharma, is the lack of transparency around the nutritional content of food in DOCCS facilities. New York’s law that requires restaurants and other food providers to publish the nutritional content of their meals does not apply to state prisons.
People’s bodies don’t respond differently just because they’re in prison.
—Leslie Soble, co-author, Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison
The lack of nutritious food might also be affecting the health of prison facilities themselves. Recent studies have found that providing improved nutrition through diet or supplements can lead to reductions in reported incidents of misconduct and violence by as much as 37 percent.
“If a new, high-tech security system promised to reduce prison stabbings and assaults by over 30 percent, legislatures would eagerly allocate millions to procure it. Yet, a significantly more effective remedy is already within arm’s reach, hiding in plain sight inside the facility cafeteria,” wrote John Koufos, project lead of the Correctional Leaders Association’s Healthy Prisons, Healthy Communities initiative, in a recent op-ed for The Hill. His organization is working with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to encourage “Make America Healthy Again” policies behind bars.
“When you look at diets inside, you see that they are impairing people’s ability to heal from trauma and make good decisions and participate in community in the best way possible,” added Soble.
This is a fixable problem. Other prison systems have shown that fresh produce can be served at scale. California’s Harvest of the Month program, which partners with small- and medium-sized farms to bring locally-grown fruits and vegetables into prison meals, was piloted at three prisons in 2023 and now operates statewide.
“We could get things in that would never show up on prison trays, and we were able to get them served,” said Soble, who helped launch the program while working as a program manager for Impact Justice, a nonprofit focused on prison reform.
New York already runs horticulture programs at some prisons. At least 13 DOCCS facilities participate in the Harvest Now program, which has contributed more than 300,000 pounds of produce grown at state prisons to New York food pantries since 2016. None of the produce grown at DOCCS facilities is served to incarcerated people.
More immediately, DOCCS could restore avenues for produce access that existed before the 2022 package policy, such as allowing families to bring produce during visitation. DOCCS could also increase the number of fresh produce items served in facility cafeterias.
“They need to change the policy, at least let us receive produce through the package room during visits,” Bush said. “I did not get sentenced to malnutrition.”
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Previously Published on nysfocus
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Photo credit: A 2022 ban on most outside packages from friends and family closed off crucial sources of fresh fruits and vegetables for people incarcerated in DOCCS facilities. | Photos: Bigc Studio and Africa Images / Canva | Illustration: Leor Stylar / New York Focus
