The taste of punishment: Women and state-supplied food in a South African prison

Food in prisons transcends basic sustenance and functions as a medium of power, punishment and psycho-physiological distress. This qualitative study explored the experiences of incarcerated women with the state-supplied food system in a South African prison. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 incarcerated women, and the data were thematically analysed to capture the realities of their daily engagement with and experiences of prison meals. The results reveal that a monotonous and starch-heavy diet led to significant nutritional deficiencies, which, for some women, worsened existing chronic health conditions. Food insecurity necessitated adaptive survival strategies, while the loss of culturally meaningful meals severed women from their identities and familial roles. Participants consistently experienced the poor quality and monotony of food as intentionally punitive, often reinforced by staff attitudes that weaponised meals to demean them. Institutional food provision emerges as a core mechanism of symbolic and material domination in a total institution, which is integral to the pains of imprisonment, slow violence against the body and the self, and the erosion of health and dignity for incarcerated women.