2025 Bill Newlin Faculty Lecture

Food that Harms, Food that Heals: Transforming Prison Food Systems in the United States

Presented by Kourtney Collum, Partridge Chair in Food and Sustainable Agriculture Systems and Associate Dean of Faculty, and Zach Soares '00, Director of A/V Services and Deputy Title IX Coordinator

Food is frequently used as an additional form of punishment for the nearly 2 million people incarcerated in jails and prisons across the United States. In this talk, Kourtney and Zach will share insights from Prison Food Systems: An Audio Production Course, where students learned the art of podcast production in order to share stories of ongoing efforts to transform carceral food systems, focusing on efforts to use food as a form of healing and as a tool to help promote rehabilitation and support successful reentry for incarcerated people.