Captive Consumers

Name: Captive Consumers
Brand: THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
Price: 76.75 AUD
Availability: PreOrder

Hunger, Violence, and Inequality in American Prison Food

By: Chin Jou

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Paperback | 4 August 2026

At a Glance

Paperback
360 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.5 x 2.5 x 15.5

Paperback

RRP $78.99

$76.75

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Available: 4th August 2026

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Much of what happens inside Americas prisons remains hidden from public view, and the food doled out to incarcerated people is no exception. In Captive Consumers, Chin Jou exposes a system of mistreatment and scandal surrounding prison food: across the country, those behind bars live with chronic hunger, eat foods contrary to their religious beliefs and medical needs, and develop foodborne illnesses at alarming rates. At the same time, corrections systems and prison food services weaponize nutritional claims to protect themselves from charges that the incarcerated are starving.
Using a wealth of sources from untapped historical records to prison newspapers, Jou excavates the voices of the incarcerated and shows that prison food dehumanizes the imprisoned, compounds racial and class inequalities, and induces more violenceultimately making carceral institutions more dangerous. But this compelling book also illuminates how people behind bars have reasserted their identities, resourcefulness, and humanity through self-prepared food even as prison food services profit from lucrative, taxpayer-funded contracts that reward cost-cutting over care. If US corrections systems continue to perpetuate physical and psychological violence through food, Jou argues, Americans will suffer not just wasted tax dollars but the cost of bringing traumatized, ailing, and hungry formerly incarcerated people back into society.

Industry Reviews

"Elegantly constructed, carefully researched, and at the cutting edge of carceral history and prison studies research. Chin Jou has accomplished something special."-Melanie D. Newport, author of This Is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration "A welcome and necessary book that shows food in prison to be a source of sustenance and deprivation, necessity and profit."-Dan Berger, author of Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era

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