As paralegals with the ACLU’s National Prison Project, we spend a lot of our time speaking to and corresponding with people in our nation’s prisons, jails, and detention centers, and their loved ones. Frequently, the top concern is food. As many Americans prepare for Thanksgiving feasts with loved ones, we can’t help but think of the people we correspond with who are deprived of fresh, nutritious meals year-round.

The food in prisons and jails across the United States is too often unpalatable (the infamous “nutraloaf,” for example) and innutritious. Diets in detention also often do not meet people’s health and religious needs. For example, in 2019, guards force fed a Hindu man in ICE detention who went on hunger strike to protest the failure to provide vegan meals to him and other Hindus in detention.

Sixty-two percent of formerly incarcerated respondents to a 2020 survey reported that they rarely or never had access to fresh vegetables while incarcerated. The typical prison diet, which is high in salt, sugar, and refined carbohydrates, contributes to the elevated rates of diabetes and heart disease among the incarcerated population. People who are incarcerated in the U.S. are also six times more likely to contract a foodborne illness than the general population.

It benefits us all to ensure that people return to their communities after incarceration in better physical and mental condition than when they went in. Meals that foster diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease, or other costly illnesses associated with poor nutrition result in expensive medical care for formerly incarcerated people, and a lost opportunity for them to return home in good health upon their release. Rebuilding a life after incarceration is difficult, and diminished health adds yet another barrier to reentry.

Here, we share just a few examples of what we’ve learned from our incarcerated clients about the food available in prisons, jails, and detention centers.

We recently visited Lewis prison in Buckeye, Arizona to speak with our clients primarily about their health care as a part of a class action lawsuit against the state prison system. In speaking with many insulin-dependent people, we learned the food they are provided is not only deficient in nutrients but also actively harmful to the management of their diabetes. One man told us that he relies entirely on commissary foods and tries to make his own meals because the prison doesn’t offer any fresh fruit or vegetables — only refined carbohydrates, like cookies, saltine crackers, and bread.

While prison commissaries carry a broader range of foods than are available in the cafeteria for people to purchase, many incarcerated people don’t have family or friends who can fund their commissary accounts. Prison jobs — when they pay — pay an average of 13 to 52 cents per hour. This leaves little money for food, especially now with soaring inflation. And there is no special medical diet available for people with diabetes in Arizona’s state prisons.

In 2020, the ACLU filed a case on behalf of people detained in Orange County’s jails in response to unsafe conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the litigation primarily focused on issues such as testing and vaccine accessibility, many of our clients expressed that their top priority was the resumption of hot meals at the jail.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the jail stopped serving hot meals for “reasons of health and safety” according to the sheriff’s department. For more than two years, the jail served sack lunches, usually rotting bologna sandwiches, for each meal of the day. Even if the sandwiches were safe to consume, a diet of processed lunch meat can lead to serious health problems such as high blood pressure and an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. It is not only inhumane but an issue of public health. In line with our clients’ priorities, the ACLU successfully advocated for the resumption of hot meals to be included in the settlement agreement.

After visiting our clients at the Baltimore jail in August and again in September 2022, it was clear that the quality and quantity of food provided is inadequate. We spent a lot of time in the infirmary, talking with the sickest people at the jail about the numerous failures and delays in their medical care. It was also in the infirmary where we received the most complaints about the food and not receiving enough of it — patients at the infirmary are inexplicably not allowed to order foods from the commissary at all. We spoke with a young man recovering from a broken jaw who had only been given two cups of broth for every meal. It took weeks for him to get Ensure, a nutritional shake, after he repeatedly told staff he was hungry.

In the general population, we spoke with a woman who was 17 weeks pregnant and experiencing hunger pains. She requested some snacks or extra portions. Many other incarcerated women told us they were also not getting enough food. One woman said jail staff told her they were getting small portions because they weren’t burning calories and getting activity outside of their cells.

The National Prison Project’s litigation against prisons, jails, and detention centers advocates for adequate health care and humane conditions, which includes nutrition. Aside from their constitutional right to the basic necessity of palatable and nutritious food, incarcerated people should be treated with dignity — and that includes a nutritious and healthful diet. The issue of food in prison is a moral, legal, and collective one. Sharing food and breaking bread is a fundamental part of our shared humanity — it’s why so many of our most important rituals happen around the dinner table. That humanity doesn’t go away because someone is incarcerated.

Below are more examples of the sparse, nutritionally scarce meals being served in prisons around the country:

Texas prison food, October 2022.

Keri Blakinger

@keribla

19 Oct, 2022

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UPDATE on Alabama prisons: this was the entirety of what grown men were served yesterday at one of the prisons where they’re still on strike.

This was breakfast. And dinner. And there was no lunch.

Keri Blakinger

@keribla

12 Oct, 2022

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And some of the food images that have been circulating and were included in a motion in the ongoing lawsuit.

Keri Blakinger

@keribla

6 Oct, 2022

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Every fan of old crime novels or cop movies is familiar with the classic police “stakeout”: round-the-clock surveillance by police hiding in a car or camped out in an apartment across the street, watching a suspect’s home. In both fact and fiction, stakeouts don’t last long — even with rotating shifts, police get tired; the costs pile up, and after a while, people start to notice that they’re being watched.

In 2022, though, technology allows police to avoid these practical limitations, conducting surveillance for months on end using small, hidden digital cameras that can be panned and zoomed from afar and that transmit video back to police to be stored indefinitely and reviewed at law enforcement’s leisure. Law enforcement agencies around the country maintain they can engage in this practice for as long as they’d like without even a modicum of concrete suspicion, and never have to obtain warrants before using a hidden surveillance camera to watch a person’s home. These technological “stakeouts” of homes can go on for months on end. They make a record of every time someone leaves their house or has a guest over, and monitor every activity in their yard, driveway, or doorstep.

This is a profound threat to privacy, and is exactly what happened to our client, Daphne Moore, and her family in Massachusetts.

So last week, the ACLU and ACLU of Massachusetts, along with the law firms of Elkins, Auer, Rudof & Schiff and Thompson & Thompson PC, filed a petition on behalf of Ms. Moore urging the U.S. Supreme Court to make clear that under the Fourth Amendment, police should be required to get a search warrant before engaging in such invasive surveillance.

Ms. Moore’s case clearly demonstrates the frightening extent of the government’s argument for unfettered discretion over the use of pole cameras. In 2017, while investigating Ms. Moore’s adult daughter, federal agents attached a small, hidden digital video camera high on a utility pole across the street from her home in Springfield, Massachusetts. On their own initiative, without getting a search warrant from a judge, agents operated the camera 24 hours a day for an uninterrupted eight-month period. The camera transmitted live video to police and could be remotely operated to zoom in and pan up, down, left, and right. Police also recorded the digital footage, creating a searchable record of Ms. Moore’s, and her family’s, patterns of life: when they left home and returned, who visited them and when, what they carried to and from the car on each trip, and more.

After eight months of continuous surveillance with the pole-mounted camera, agents arrested Ms. Moore’s daughter on drug charges. Nearly a year after that, they brought charges against our client — a lawyer, respected judicial clerk, devoted church member, and a grandmother raising her grandkids — as well. But after the government disclosed its pole-camera surveillance to the defense before trial, a federal district court judge ruled that operating the camera over a long period without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment and ordered the pole camera footage to be excluded as evidence at any trial. The government immediately appealed, and the full en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit took up the case to clarify whether a warrant is required for long-term pole-camera surveillance of a home.

A full year after the oral argument, the court split evenly on the issue. Three judges wrote an opinion explaining why long-term pole-camera surveillance of a home violates people’s reasonable expectations of privacy under the Fourth Amendment. The other three judges disagreed, writing that because passersby could see our client’s driveway, yard, and front door, there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy against police using digital recording technology to make a complete record of everything that happened on her property over the course of eight months.

This divide mirrors a split among federal appeals courts and state supreme courts across the country. Three federal courts of appeals have concluded that police can use pole cameras to surveil homes without any constitutional limit. In contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the supreme courts of Colorado and South Dakota, have held that long-term pole-camera surveillance of a home is a Fourth Amendment search, for which a warrant is required. Massachusetts’ highest court has reached the same outcome under its state constitution. (The ACLU’s amicus briefs in the Colorado and Massachusetts cases are here and here).

Central to this case is the question of how to apply recent Supreme Court decisions on privacy in the digital age to this particular technology. In Carpenter v. United States, a 2018 case that the ACLU argued, the Supreme Court held that police need a warrant before requesting significant periods of a person’s historical cell phone location data from their cell phone company. In that case, the government argued that people lose Fourth Amendment protection in that data because they expose their location to their phone company by carrying a cell phone, and to other members of the public who might see us as we go about our days. The court rejected the government’s argument, explaining that data documenting a person’s location over time reveals extraordinarily private information, and a warrant is required to avoid police exploiting cell phone technology to amass a complete and near-perfect record of everywhere they’ve been.

Last week’s filing provides an opportunity for the Supreme Court to make clear that the rationale of the Carpenter decision applies to prolonged surveillance, via remote video cameras, of a person’s home. The small, cheap digital camera technology available today poses a similar threat to the location tracking the Supreme Court addressed in Carpenter, allowing police to covertly amass a complete record of our activities at the thresholds of our homes. Despite the magnitude of the privacy invasions in these cases, courts continue to struggle to apply the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter and other recent Fourth Amendment cases to pole-camera surveillance.

Only the Supreme Court can impose the strong, nationwide protections that Americans need and deserve. Moore v. United States provides the opportunity to do so — and clarify that police cannot deploy new and cheap technology to conduct constant stakeouts of Americans’ homes wherever and for however long they please.

In the days and weeks after the 2020 presidential election, outright lies peddled on the national stage about the validity and security of state-administered elections proliferated. Politicians and political commentators spread and amplified falsehood after falsehood, baselessly alleging that the election was stolen through widespread fraud simply because their candidate of choice lost. Despite the fact that these allegations were proven false time and time again, and rejected by scores of state and federal courts, growing segments of the population became adherents to this “Big Lie.” This culminated in the devastating and unprecedented January 6 attacks on our Capitol that attempted to prevent a duly-elected president from assuming office.

One of the lasting threats galvanized by the “Big Lie” is election denialism — baselessly casting doubt on or refusing to accept the outcome of free, fair, and secure elections. In the face of ample evidence of the legitimacy of the 2020 election outcome, election deniers continue to try to undermine faith in our electoral process and democracy through baseless allegations of election fraud for personal and political gain. Alarmingly, many extreme election deniers secured candidacies for key state and federal positions that would give them direct control or influence over election administration and policy.

It became clear as we approached the 2022 midterm elections that democracy itself — in addition to so many of our civil liberties — was at stake and on the ballot. Nearly 200 candidates on the ballot outright denied the 2020 presidential results through rhetoric or actions, and many more cast doubts on the 2020 election results. This included U.S. Senate candidates in Arizona and Nevada; U.S. House candidates in almost every state; gubernatorial candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona; and secretary of state candidates in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, just to name a few.

Now, with most of the results of the midterm elections in, there is no doubt that the American people took firm stances against election denialism and voted to protect our democracy in the most vital races.

Election deniers that vied to be the next secretary of state — a position that involves directly overseeing state and local elections — lost their races in key battleground states, including in Arizona, Minnesota, and Nevada. The ACLU and our state affiliates made a substantial investment in educating voters about the vital role of secretaries of state and where candidates stood on protecting voting rights and democracy.

Two of the most fervent and vocal election deniers running for governor lost their races in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is especially important because its governor appoints the secretary of state.

Although this election season was an important step towards restoring democracy, the fight is far from over. While some of the most extreme election deniers failed in vital competitive races, many election deniers were elected, particularly to the U.S. House of Representatives and statehouses around the country. As we turn our focus toward the 2024 elections and beyond, Congress must enact bipartisan reforms to the Electoral Count Act before this Congress ends to ensure that electoral votes tallied by Congress accurately reflect each state’s popular vote for president. And we must continue to fight for federal voting rights legislation to address voter suppression efforts, fully restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and expand access to the ballot.

American Civil Liberties Union

ACLU Comment on House Vote of the Electoral Count Act

Moreover, as state legislative sessions approach, we expect to see continued state-level efforts to interfere with free and fair elections and restrict access to the ballot box. We have seen this before: In 2021 alone, over 400 bills with voter suppression provisions were introduced in states around the country. These suppression efforts included restricting vote by mail, limiting early voting, making it more difficult to register to vote, implementing stricter voter ID requirements, enacting problematic voter purge rules, making it harder for voters with disabilities to cast a ballot, and threatening election officials and voters with new or increased criminal penalties.

Just this year, at least seven states enacted 10 laws to make voting more difficult by creating new hurdles to voting by mail (including limiting drop boxes and permanent absentee voting) and making it more difficult to register to vote (including through documentary proof of citizen requirements and limiting Election Day registration). Additionally, at least 12 laws that jeopardize the nonpartisan nature of elections or aim to intimidate election officials and voters with new civil or criminal penalties were enacted in 2022.

While we continue to fight back against attacks on voting rights and the integrity of our elections, we are doubling down on our proactive efforts to increase access to the ballot box and safeguard our democracy. In states such as New Mexico, we will build on progress made this session to push for comprehensive voting rights legislation that restores the voting rights of people convicted of felonies and makes it easier for Indigenous voters to exercise their right to vote.

In Connecticut, following the success of a ballot measure that removed a constitutional restriction on early in-person voting, the legislature has an opportunity to enact strong, accessible early in-person voting legislation. In Michigan, we will build on this midterm’s electoral successes by working to expand Election Day registration locations, automatic voter registration opportunities, and youth voting rights. We will also advocate for the adoption of the National Popular Vote Compact in states that have yet to enact it to move us closer to our ideal of one person, one vote in presidential elections, and we will advocate for the few remaining states that do not utilize voting machines with paper trails for all elections to do so.

Voting rights and protecting our democracy has always been a top priority for the ACLU. Our ACLU affiliates and our millions of supporters stand ready to continue this fight. We invite you to join us in upholding our democracy and ensuring that each and every voice — and vote — counts.