Prison food must improve

Giving children in prison a pill hoping it will have a miracle effect on their behaviour is misguided. The Prison Service is allowing an experiment on children in prison giving them supplements. Research carried out for the School Food Trust (of which I am Board member) by King’s College, London, does show a clear link between good diet and behaviour and concentration. But, to think we can solve complex problems relating to individual criminal behaviour with a pill is nonsense.

Changing the diet choices of children in schools is taking a huge effort and the same would be necessary in prisons. Young people must learn to cook, budget and shop. They must learn to enjoy food and about balanced choices. Changing the food of an institution – school or prison – must involve everyone. The quick pill option means sending a child off to their cell with dollops of gloop on a plastic tray to eat it on their knees in a cell with an open toilet.

I was in a prison holding young people a couple of days ago and saw the swill that passed for food. The burger was grey and had clearly been reconstituted from the extremeties, there were over-boiled carrots, and ubiquitous chips, sloppy and greasy. Apples and oranges were on offer but the boys said they were often bad. Prison governors have about £1.30 to spend on a whole day’s food.

I do not doubt that the diet of children in prison is deficient and it probably has been for years before they came into prison. These young peopel are the victims of the dreadful school food we inflicted on children for the past 20 years.

I have been trying to persuade the Youth Justice Board, the body that places children in prisons, to engage with the issue to no avail. To pretend this can be solved with a pill is masking serious problems, deceiving the children and authorities, and failing to provide children with the tools to prepare and enjoy good food.